Medical education in the United States and Canada; a report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

MEDICAL EDUCATION

IN THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA//

A REPORT TO

(THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING. 8cA-W- "*

ABRAHAM FLEXNER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

HENRY S. PRITCHETT

PRESIDENT OF THE FOUNDATION

BULLETIN NUMBER FOUR

576 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY

COPYRIGHT 1910

BY

THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING

D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON

Library

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction . vii

PART I

CHAPTER

I. Historical and General 8

II. The Proper Basis of Medical Education .20

III. The Actual Basis of Medical Education 28

IV. The Course of Study : The Laboratory Branches. (A) First and Second

Years 52

V. The Course of Study: The Laboratory Branches. (B) First and Second

Years (continued) ......... 71

VI. The Course of Study : The Hospital and the Medical School. (A) Third

and Fourth Years 91

VH. The Course of Study : The Hospital and the Medical School. (B) Third

and Fourth Years (continued) . . . . . . 105

VIII. The Financial Aspects of Medical Education 126

IX. Reconstruction . . . 143

X. Medical Sects . . 156

XL The State Boards •. . 167

XII. The Postgraduate School . . 174

XIII. The Medical Education of Women 178

XIV. The Medical Education of the Negro ' 180

PART II
The Medical Schools of

Alabama 185

Arkansas ............ 187

California 188

Colorado 197

Connecticut 199

District of Columbia 201

iv CONTENTS

Georgia 203

Illinois 207

Indiana 220

Iowa ............. 222

Kansas . . . . . .. . . . . . 225

Kentucky 229

Louisiana 231

Maine 233

Maryland . 234

Massachusetts 239

Michigan 243

Minnesota 247

Mississippi 249

Missouri ............ 251

Nebraska 259

New England 261

New Hampshire 263

New York 265

North Carolina 279

North Dakota 282

Ohio 283

Oklahoma 289

Oregon 291

Pennsylvania 293

South Carolina 300

South Dakota 301

Tennessee 302

Texas 309

Utah 313

Vermont 313

Virginia 314

CONTENTS v

West Virginia 317

Wisconsin 317

Canada 320

APPENDIX

Table showing number in Faculty, Enrolment, Fee Income, Budget of Schools

by States 327

INDEX 337

INTRODUCTION

THE present report on medical education forms the first of a series of papers on pro-
fessional schools to be issued by the Carnegie Foundation. The preparation of these
papers has grown naturally out of the situation with which the trustees of the Founda-
tion were confronted when they took up the trust committed to them.

When the work of the Foundation began five years ago the trustees found them-
selves intrusted with an endowment to be expended for the benefit of teachers in
the colleges and universities of the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland. It
required but the briefest examination to show that amongst the thousand institu-
tions in English-speaking North America which bore the name college or university
there was little unity of purpose or of standards. A large majority of all the insti-
tutions in the United States bearing the name college were really concerned with
secondary education.

Under these conditions the trustees felt themselves compelled to begin a critical
study of the work of the college and of the university in different parts of this wide
area, and to commend to colleges and universities the adoption of such standards as
would intelligently relate the college to the secondary school and to the university.
While the Foundation has carefully refrained from attempting to become a stan-
dardizing agency, its influence has been thrown in the direction of a differentiation
between the secondary school and the college, and between the college and the uni-
versity. It is indeed only one of a number of agencies, including the stronger colleges
and universities, seeking to bring about in American education some fair conception
of unity and the attainment ultimately of a system of schools intelligently related
to each other and to the ambitions and needs of a democracy.

At the beginning, the Foundation naturally turned its study to the college, as
that part of our educational system most directly to be benefited by its endowment.
Inevitably, however, the scrutiny of the college led to the consideration of the re-
lations between the college or university and the professional schools which had
gathered about it or were included in it. The confusion found here was quite as great as
that which exists between the field of the college and that of the secondary school. Col- 1
leges and universities were discovered to have all sorts of relations to their professional \
schools of law, of medicine, and of theology. In some cases these relations were of the
frailest texture, constituting practically only a license from the college by which a
proprietary p^ipal gffrnnl 9^ lavy school was enabled to live under its name. In other
cases the medical school was incorporated into the college or university, but remained
an imperium in imperio, the college assuming no responsibility for its standards or
its support. In yet other cases the college or university assumed partial obligation of
support, but no responsibility for the standards of the professional school, while in
only a relatively small number of cases was the school of law or of medicine an in-
tegral part of the university, receiving from it university standards and adequate

viii INTRODUCTION

maintenance. For the past two decades there has been a marked tendency to set up
some connection between universities and detached medical schools, but under the
very loose construction just referred to.

Meanwhile the requirements of medical education have enormously increased. The
fundamental sciences upon which medicine depends have been greatly extended.
The laboratory has come to furnish alike to the physician and to the surgeon a new
means for diagnosing and combating disease. The education of the medical practi-
tioner under these changed conditions makes entirely different demands in respect to
both preliminary and professional training.

Under these conditions and in the face of the advancing standards of the best
medical schools it was clear that the time had come when the relation of professional
education in medicine to the general system of education should be clearly defined.
The first step towards such a clear understanding was to ascertain the facts concern-
ing medical education and the medical schools themselves at the present time. In ac-
cordance, therefore, with the recommendation of the president and the executive com-
mittee, the trustees of the Carnegie Foundation at their meeting in November, 1908,
authorized a study and report upon the schools of medicine and law in the United
States and appropriated the money necessary for this undertaking. The present report
upon medical education, prepared, under the direction of the Foundation, by Mr.
Abraham Flexner, is the first result of that action.

No effort has been spared to procure accurate and detailed information as to the
facilities, resources, and methods of instruction of the medical schools. They have
not only been separately visited, but every statement made in regard to each detail
has been carefully checked with the data in possession of the American Medical Asso-
ciation, likewise obtained by personal inspection, and with the records of the Asso-
ciation of American Medical Colleges, so far as its membership extends. The details
as stated go forth with the sanction of at least two, and frequently more, independent
observers.

In making this study the schools of all medical sects have been included. It is clear
that so long as a man is to practise medicine, the public is equally concerned in his
right preparation for that profession, whatever he call himself, — allopath, homeo-
path, eclectic, osteopath, or whatnot. It is equally clear that he should be grounded
in the fundamental sciences upon which medicine rests, whether he practises under
one name or under another.

It will be readily understood that the labor involved in visiting 150 such schools
is great, and that in the immense number of details dealt with it is altogether im-
possible to be sure that every minute fact concerning these institutions has been
ascertained and set down. While the Foundation cannot hope to obtain in so great
an undertaking absolute completeness in every particular, such care has been exer-
cised, and the work has been so thoroughly reviewed by independent authorities,
that the statements which are given here may be confidently accepted as setting

INTRODUCTION ix

forth the essential facts respecting medical education and respecting the institutions
which deal with it.

In this connection it is perhaps desirable to add one further word. Educational
institutions, particularly those which are connected with a college or a university,
are peculiarly sensitive to outside criticism, and particularly to any statement of
the circumstances of their own conduct or equipment which seems to them unfavor-
able in comparison with that of other institutions. As a rule, the only knowledge
which the public has concerning an institution of learning is derived from the state-
ments given out by the institution itself, information which, even under the best cir-
cumstances, is colored by local hopes, ambitions, and points of view. A considerable
number of colleges and universities take the unfortunate position that they are private
institutions and that the public is entitled to only such knowledge of their operations
as they choose to communicate. In the case of many medical schools the aversion to
publicity is quite as marked as it is reputed to be in the case of certain large indus-
trial trusts. A few institutions questioned the right of any outside agency to collect and
publish the facts concerning their medical schools. The Foundation was called upon to
answer the question : Shall such an agency as the Foundation, dedicated to the bet-
terment of American education, make public the facts concerning the medical schools
of the United States and Canada?

The attitude of the Foundation is that all colleges and universities, whether sup-
ported by taxation or by private endowment, are in truth public service corporations,
and that the public is entitled to know the facts concerning their administration and
development, whether those facts pertain to the financial or to the educational side.
We believe, therefore, that in seeking to present an accurate and fair statement of
the work and the facilities of the medical schools of this country, we are serving the
best possible purpose which such an agency as the Foundation can serve; and, further-
more, that only by such publicity can the true interests of education and of the
uni versities themselves be subserved. In such a reasonable publicity lies the hope
for progress in medical education.

I wish to add with pleasure that notwithstanding reluctance in some quarters to
furnish information, the medical schools of the colleges and universities, as well
as proprietary and independent medical schools, have generally accepted the view
just stated and have seconded the work of the Foundation by offering to those who
were engaged in this study every facility to learn their opportunities and resources;
and I beg to express the thanks of the trustees of the Foundation to each of these
institutions for the cooperation which it has given to a study which, in the very nature
of the case, was to bear sharply in the way of criticism upon many of those called
on for cooperation.

The report which follows is divided into two parts. In the first half the history of
medical education in this country and its present status are set forth. The story is
there told of the gradual development of the commercial medical school, distinctly

x INTRODUCTION

an American product, of the mo4ern movement for the transfer of medical education
to university surroundings, and of the effort to procure stricter scrutiny of those seek-
ing to enter the profession. The present status of medical education is then fully
described and a forecast of possible progress in the future is attempted. The second
part of the report gives in detail a description of the schools in existence in each
state of the Union and in each province of Canada.

It is the purpose of the Foundation to proceed at once with a similar study of medi-
cal education in Great Britain, Germany, and France, in order that those charged
with the reconstruction of medical education in America may profit by the experi-
ence of other countries.

The striking and significant facts which are here brought out are of enormous con-
sequence not only to the medical practitioner, but to every citizen of the United
States and Canada; for it is a singular fact that the organization of medical educa-
tion in this country has hitherto been such as not only to commercialize the process
of education itself, but also to obscure in the minds of the public any discrimination
between the well trained physician and the physician who has had no adequate train-
ing whatsoever. As a rule, Americans, when they avail themselves of the services of
a physician, make only the slightest inquiry as to what his previous training and
preparation have been. One of the problems of the future is to educate the public
itself to appreciate the fact that very seldom, under existing conditions, does a patient
receive the best aid which it is possible to give him in the present state of medicine,
and that this is due mainly to the fact that a vast army of men is admitted to the
practice of medicine who are untrained in sciences fundamental to the profession and
quite without a sufficient experience with disease. A right education of public opinion
is one of the problems of future medical education.

The significant facts revealed by this study are these:

(1) For twenty-five years past there has been an enormous over-production of un-
educated and ill trained medical practitioners. This has been in absolute disregard
of the public welfare and without any serious thought of the interests of the public.
Taking the United States as a whole, physicians are four or five times as numerous in
proportion to population as in older countries like Germany.

(2) Over-production of ill trained men is due in the main to the existence of a
very large number of commercial schools, sustained in many cases by advertising
methods through which a mass of unprepared youth is drawn out of industrial occu-
pations into the study of medicine.

(3) Until recently the conduct of a medical school was a profitable business, for
the methods of instruction were mainly didactic. As the need for laboratories has be-
come more keenly felt, the expenses of an efficient medical school have been greatly
increased. The inadequacy of many of these schools may be judged from the fact that
nearly half of all our medical schools have incomes below $10,000, and these incomes
determine the quality of instruction that they can and do offer.

INTRODUCTION xi

Colleges and universities have in large measure failed in the past twenty-five years
to appreciate the great advance in medical education and the increased cost of teach-
ing it along modern lines. Many universities desirous of apparent educational com-
pleteness have annexed medical schools without making themselves responsible either
for the standards of the professional schools or for their support.

(4) The existence of many of these unnecessary and inadequate medical schools has
been defended by the argument that a poor medical school is justified in the interest
of the poor boy. It is clear that the poor boy has no right to go into any profession
for which he is not willing to obtain adequate preparation; but the facts set forth in
this report make it evident that this argument is insincere, and that the excuse
which has hitherto been put forward in the name of the poor boy is in reality an ar-
gument in behalf of the poor medical school.

(5) A hospital under complete educational control is as necessary to a medical school
as is a laboratory of chemistry or pathology. High grade teaching within a hospital
introduces a most wholesome and beneficial influence into its routine. Trustees of hos-
pitals, public and private, should therefore go to the limit of their authority in open-
ing hospital wards to teaching, provided only that the universities secure sufficient
funds on their side to employ as teachers men who are devoted to clinical science.

In view of these facts, progress for the future would seem to require a very much
smaller number of medical schools, better equipped and better conducted than our
schools now as a rule are; and the needs of the public would equally require that we
have fewer physicians graduated each year, but that these should be better educated
and better trained. With this idea accepted, it necessarily follows that the medical
school will, if rightly conducted, articulate not only with the university, but with
the general system of education. Just what form that articulation must take will
vary in the immediate future in different parts of the country. Throughout the east-
ern and central states the movement under which the medical school articulates with
the second year of the college has already gained such impetus that it can be regarded
as practically accepted. In the southern states for the present it would seem that
articulation with the four-year high school would be a reasonable starting-point for
the future. In time the development of secondary education in the south and the
growth of the colleges will make it possible for southern medical schools to accept
the two-year college basis of preparation. With reasonable prophecy the time is not
far distant when, with fair respect for the interests of the public and the need for
physicians, the articulation of the medical school with the university may be the
same throughout the entire country. For in the future the college or the university
which accepts a medical school must make itself responsible for university standards
in the medical school and for adequate support for medical education. The day has
gone by when any university can retain the respect of educated men, or when it can
fulfil its duty to education, by retaining a low grade professional school for the sake
of its own institutional completeness.

xii INTRODUCTION

If these fundamental principles can be made clear to the people of the United
States and of Canada, and to those who govern the colleges and the universities, we
may confidently expect that the next ten years will see a very much smaller number
of medical schools in this country, but a greatly increased efficiency in medical edu-
cation, and that during the same period medical education will become rightly articu-
lated with, and rightly related to, the general educational system of the whole country.

In the suggestions which are made in this report looking toward the future de-
velopment of medicine, it ought to be pointed out that no visionary or impossible
achievement is contemplated. It is not expected that a Johns Hopkins Medical School
can be erected immediately in cities where public support of education has hitherto
been meager. Nevertheless, it is quite true that there is a certain minimum of equip-
ment and a minimum of educational requirement without which no attempt ought
to be made to teach medicine. Hitherto not only proprietary medical schools, but
colleges and universities, have paid scant attention to this fact. They have been ready
to assume the responsibility of turning loose upon a helpless community men licensed
to the practice of medicine without any serious thought as to whether they had re-
ceived a fair training or not. To-day, under the methods pursued in modern medi-
cine, we know with certainty that a medical school cannot be conducted without a
certain minimum of expense and without a certain minimum of facilities. The insti-
tution which attempts to conduct a school below this plane is clearly injuring, not
helping, civilization. In the suggestions which are made in this report as to what
constitutes a reasonable minimum no visionary ideal has been pursued, but only such
things have been insisted upon as in the present light of our American civilization
every community has a right to demand of its medical school, if medicine is to be
taught at all.

It seems desirable also in connection with both the medical school and the uni-
versity or college to add one word further concerning the relation of financial sup-
port to efficiency and sincerity. Where any criticism is attempted of inadequate
methods or inadequate facilities, no reply is more common than this: "Our insti-
tution cannot be judged from its financial support. It depends upon the enthusiasm
and the devotion of its teachers and its supporters, and such devotion cannot be
measured by financial standards. "

Such an answer contains so fine a sentiment and so pregnant a truth that it often-
times serves to turn aside the most just criticism. It is true that every college must
ultimately depend upon the spirit and devotion of those who work in it, but behind
this noble statement hides most of the insincerity, sham, and pretense not only of the
American medical school, but of the American college. The answer quoted is com-
monly made by the so-called university that, with an income insufficient to support
a decent college, is trying to cover the whole field of university education. It is the
same answer that one receives from the medical school which, with wholly inade-
quate facilities, is turning out upon an innocent and long-suffering community men

INTRODUCTION xiii

who must get their medical education after they get out of the institution. In
many of these ill manned and poorly equipped institutions there is to be found a
large measure of devotion, but the fact remains that such devotion is usually ill
placed, and the individual who gives it loses sight of the interests of education and
of the general public in his desire to keep alive an institution without reason or
right to exist.

It will, however, be urged by weak schools that the fact that an institution is ill
manned and poorly equipped is inconclusive; that in the time devoted to the ex-
amination of a single school it is impossible to do it justice. Objection of this kind
is apt to come from schools of two types, — ineffective institutions in large cities,
and schools attached to colleges in small towns in which clinical material is scarce.
In my opinion the objection is without force. A trained observer of wide experience
can go directly to the heart of a problem of this character. The spirit, ideals, and
facilities of a professional or technical school can be quickly grasped. In every in-
stance in which further inquiry has been made, the conclusions reached by the au-
thor of the report have been sustained.

The development which is here suggested for medical education is conditioned
largely upon three factors: first, upon the creation of a public opinion which shall
discriminate between the ill trained and the rightly trained physician, and which will
also insist upon the enactment of such laws as will require all practitioners of medi-
cine, whether they belong to one sect or another, to ground themselves in the funda-
mentals upon which medical science rests ; secondly, upon the universities and their
attitude towards medical standards and medical support; finally, upon the attitude
of the members of the medical profession towards the standards of their own practice
and upon their sense of honor with respect to their own profession.

These last two factors are moral rather than educational. They call for an educa-
tional patriotism on the part of the institutions of learning and a medical patriotism
on the part of the physician.

By educational patriotism I mean this : a university has a mission greater than the
formation of a large student body or the attainment of institutional completeness,
namely, the duty of loyalty to the standards of common honesty, of intellectual sin-
cerity, of scientific accuracy. A university with educational patriotism will not take
up the work of medical education unless it can discharge its duty by it; or if,
in the days of ignorance once winked at, a university became entangled in a medi-
cal school alliance, it will frankly and courageously deal with a situation which is
no longer tenable. It will either demand of its medical school university ideals and
give it university support, or else it will drop the effort to do what it can only do
badly.

By professional patriotism amongst medical men I mean that sort of regard for
the honor of the profession and that sense of responsibility for its efficiency which
will enable a member of that profession to rise above the consideration of personal

xiv INTRODUCTION

or of professional gain. As Bacon truly wrote, "Every man owes a duty to his pro-
fession," and in no profession is this obligation more clear than in that of the mod-
ern physician. Perhaps in no other of the great professions does one find greater dis-
crepancies between the ideals of those who represent it. No members of the social
order are more self-sacrificing than the true physicians and surgeons, and of this
fine group none deserve so much of society as those who have taken upon their
shoulders the burden of medical education. On the other hand, the profession has
been diluted by the presence of a great number of men who have come from weak
schools with low ideals both of education and of professional honor. If the medical
education of our country is in the immediate future to go upon a plane of efficiency
and of credit, those who represent the higher ideals of the medical profession must
make a stand for that form of medical education which is calculated to advance the
true interests of the whole people and to better the ideals of medicine itself.

There is raised in the discussion of this question a far-reaching economic pro-
blem to which society has as yet given little attention ; that is to say, What safeguards
may society and the law throw about admission to a profession like that of law or
of medicine in order that a sufficient number of men may be induced to enter it and
yet the unfit and the undesirable may be excluded?

It is evident that in a society constituted as are our modern states, the interests of
the social order will be served best when the number of men entering a given pro-
fession reaches and does not exceed a certain ratio. For example, in law and medi-
cine one sees best in a small village the situation created by the over-production of
inadequately trained men. In a town of two thousand people one will find in most
of our states from five to eight physicians where two well trained men could do the
work efficiently and make a competent livelihood. When, however, six or eight ill
trained physicians undertake to gain a living in a town which can support only two,
the whole plane of professional conduct is lowered in the struggle which ensues, each
man becomes intent upon his own practice, public health and sanitation are neglected,
and the ideals and standards of the profession tend to demoralization.

A similar state of affairs comes from the presence of too large a number of ill
trained lawyers in a community. When six or eight men seek to gain their living from
the practice of the law in a community in which, at the most, two good lawyers
could do all the work, the demoralization to society becomes acute. Not only is the
process of the law unduly lengthened, but the temptation is great to create busi-
ness. No small proportion of the American lack of respect for the law grows out of
the presence of this large number of ill trained men seeking to gain a livelihood
from the business which ought in the nature of the case to support only a much
smaller number. It seems clear that as nations advance in civilization, they will be
driven to throw around the admission to these great professions such safeguards as
will limit the number of those who enter them to some reasonable estimate of the
number who are actually needed. It goes without saying that no system of stan-

INTRODUCTION xv

dards of admission to a profession can exclude all the unfit or furnish a perfect
body of practitioners, but a reasonable enforcement of such standards will at least
relieve the body politic of a large part of the difficulty which comes from over-
production, and will safeguard the right of society to the service of trained men in
the great callings which touch so closely our physical and political life.

The object of the Foundation in undertaking studies of this character is to serve
a constructive purpose, not a critical one. Unless the information here brought to-
gether leads to constructive work, it will fail of its purpose. The very disappearance
of many existing schools is part of the reconstructive process. Indeed, in the course
of preparing the report a number of results have already come about which are
of the highest interest from the constructive point of view. Several colleges, finding
themselves unable to carry on a medical school upon right lines, have, frankly facing
the situation, discontinued their medical departments, the result being a real gain to
medical education. Elsewhere, competing medical schools which were dividing the stu-
dents and the hospital facilities have united into a single school. In still other instances
large sums of money have been raised to place medical education on a firmer basis.

In the preparation of this report the Foundation has kept steadily in view the
interests of two classes, which in the over-multiplication of medical schools have
usually been forgotten, — first, the youths who are to study medicine and to become
the future practitioners, and, secondly, the general public, which is to live and die
under their ministrations.

No one can become familiar with this situation without acquiring a hearty sym-
pathy for the American youth who, too often the prey of commercial advertising
methods, is steered into the practice of medicine with almost no opportunity to
learn the difference between an efficient medical school and a hopelessly inadequate
one. A clerk who is receiving $50 a month in the country store gets an alluring
brochure which paints the life of the physician as an easy road to wealth. He has
no realization of the difference between medicine as a profession and medicine as a
business, nor as a rule has he any adviser at hand to show him that the first requi-
site for the modern practitioner of medicine is a good general education. Such a boy
falls an easy victim to the commercial medical school, whether operating under the
name of a university or college, or alone.

The interests of the general public have been so generally lost sight of in this
matter that the public has in large measure forgot that it has any interests to pro-
tect. And yet in no other way does education more closely touch the individual than
in the quality of medical training which the institutions of the country provide.
Not only the personal well-being of each citizen, but national, state, and municipal
sanitation rests upon the quality of the training which the medical graduate has re-
ceived. The interest of the public is to have well trained practitioners in sufficient
number for the needs of society. The source whence these practitioners are to come
is of far less consequence.

xvi INTRODUCTION

In view of this fact, the argument advanced for the retention of medical schools in
places where good clinical instruction is impossible is directly against the public
interest. If the argument were valid, it would mean that the sick man is better off
in the hands of an incompetent home-grown practitioner than in those of one well
trained in an outside school. Such an argument ought no longer to blind the eyes
of intelligent men to the actual situation. Any state of the Union or any province
of Canada is better off without a medical school than with one conducted in a com-
mercial spirit and below a reasonable plane of efficiency. No state and no section of
a state capable of supporting a good practitioner will suffer by following this policy.
The state of Washington, which has no medical school within its borders, is doubt-
less supplied with as capable and well trained a body of medical practitioners as is
Missouri with its eleven medical schools or Illinois with its fourteen.

The point of view which keeps in mind the needs and qualifications of the medi-
cal student and the interests of the great public is quite a different one from that
which the institution which conducts a medical department ordinarily occupies. The
questions which look largest to the institutions are : Can we add a medical school to
our other departments? and if so, where can we find the students? The questions
which the other point of view suggest are : Is a medical school needed ? Cannot those
qualified to study medicine find opportunities in existing schools? If not, are the
means and the facilities at hand for teaching medicine on a right basis?

While the aim of the Foundation has throughout been constructive, its attitude
towards the difficulties and problems of the situation is distinctly sympathetic. The
report indeed turns the light upon conditions which, instead of being fruitful and
inspiring, are in many instances commonplace, in other places bad, and in still others,
scandalous. It is nevertheless true that no one set of men or no one school of medi-
cine is responsible for what still remains in the form of commercial medical educa-
tion. Our hope is that this report will make plain once for all that the day of the
commercial medical school has passed. It will be observed that, except for a brief his-
torical introduction, intended to show how present conditions have come about, no
account is given of the past of any institution. The situation is described as it exists to-
day in the hope that out of it, quite regardless of the past, a new order may be speedily
developed. There is no need now of recriminations over what has been, or of apolo-
gies by way of defending a regime practically obsolete. Let us address ourselves re-
solutely to the task of reconstructing the American medical school on the lines of the
highest modern ideals of efficiency and in accordance with the finest conceptions of
public service.

It is hoped that both the purpose of the Foundation and its point of view as thus
stated may be remembered in any consideration of the report which follows, and that
this publication may serve as a starting-point both for the intelligent citizen and for
the medical practitioner in a new national effort to strengthen the medical profession
and rightly to relate medical education to the general system of schools of our nation.

INTRODUCTION xvii

The Foundation is under the greatest obligation in the preparation of this report
to leading representatives of medicine and surgery in this country for their coopera-
tion and advice. The officers of the various medical associations and of the Associa-
tion of American Medical Colleges have furnished information which was invaluable
and have given aid in the most cordial way. We are particularly indebted for con-
stant and generous assistance to Dr. William H. Welch of Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity, Dr. Simon Flexner of the Rockefeller Institute, and Dr. Arthur D. Bevan,
chairman of the Council on Education of the American Medical Association. In ad-
dition, our acknowledgments are due to Dr. N. P. Colwell, secretary of the Council on
Education of the American Medical Association, and to Dr. F. C. Zapffe, secretary
of the Association of American Medical Colleges, for most helpful cooperation. I wish
to acknowledge also our indebtedness to a number of eminent men connected with
various schools of medicine who have been kind enough to read the proof of this
report and to give us the benefit of their comment and criticism.

HENRY S. PRITCHETT.
April 16, 1910.

PART I
MEDICAL EDUCATION

IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL

THE American medical school is now well along in the second century of its history.1
It began, and for many years continued to exist, as a supplement to the apprentice-
ship system still in vogue during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
likely youth of that period, destined to a medical career, was at an early age inden-
tured to some reputable practitioner; to whom his service was successively menial,
pharmaceutical, and professional: he ran his master's errands, washed the bottles,
mixed the drugs, spread the plasters, and finally, as the stipulated term drew towards
its close, actually took part in the daily practice of his preceptor, — bleeding his
patients, pulling their teeth, and obeying a hurried summons in the night. The
quality of the training varied within large limits with the capacity and conscientious-
ness of the master. Ambitious spirits sought, therefore, a more assured and inspiring
discipline. Beginning early in the eighteenth century, having served their time at
home, they resorted in rapidly increasing numbers to the hospitals and lecture-halls
of Leyden, Paris, London, and Edinburgh. The difficulty of the undertaking proved
admirably selective ; for the students who crossed the Atlantic gave a good account
of themselves. Returning to their native land, they sought opportunities to share
with their less fortunate or less adventurous fellows the rich experience gained as
they "walked the hospitals" of the old world in the footsteps of Cullen, Munro, and
the Hunters. The voices of the great masters of that day thus reechoed in the recent
western wilderness. High scientific and professional ideals impelled the youthful
enthusiasts, who bore their lighted torches safely back across the waters.

Out of these early essays in medical teaching, the American medical school devel-
oped. As far back as 1750 informal classes and demonstrations, mainly in anatomy,
are matters of record. Philadelphia was then the chief center of medical interest.
There, in 1762, William Shippen the younger, after a sojourn of five years abroad,
began in the very year of his return home, a course of lectures on midwifery. In the
following autumn he announced a series of anatomical lectures " for the advantage
of the young gentlemen now engaged in the study of physic in this and the neighbor-
ing provinces, whose circumstances and connections will not admit of their going
abroad for improvement to the anatomical schools in Europe; and also for the en-
tertainment of any gentlemen who may have the curiosity to understand the anatomy
of the Human Frame." From these detached courses the step to an organized medi-
cal school was taken at the instigation of Shippen's friend and fellow student abroad,

1 This statement has reference only to the United States and Canada, with which the present account
alone deals. As a matter of fact, a chair of medicine was established at the University of Mexico
towards the close of the sixteenth century. A complete medical school was there developed. James J.
Walsh : "First American Medical School," in New York Medical Journal, Oct. 10, 1908 (based on
Historia de la medicina en Mexico des de la epoca de los Iiulios, hasta la present*. Por Francisco
Flores. Mexico, 1886).

4 MEDICAL EDUCATION

John Morgan, who in 1765 proposed to the trustees of the College of Philadelphia
the creation of a professorship in the theory and practice of medicine. At the ensuing
Commencement, Morgan delivered a noble and prophetic discourse, still pertinent,
upon the institution of medical schools in America. The trustees were favorable to
the suggestion ; the chair was established, and Morgan himself was its first occupant.
Soon afterwards Shippen became professor of anatomy and surgery. Thirteen years
previously the Pennsylvania Hospital, conceived by Thomas Bond, had been estab-
lished through the joint efforts of Bond himself and Benjamin Franklin. Realizing
that the student "must Join Examples with Study, before he can be sufficiently
qualified to prescribe for the sick, for Language and Books alone can never give him
Adequate Ideas of Diseases and the best methods of Treating them," Bond now
argued successfully in behalf of bedside training for the medical students. " There
the Clinical professor comes in to the Aid of Speculation and demonstrates the Truth
of Theory by Facts," he declared in words that a century and a half later still warrant
repetition; "he meets his pupils at stated times in the Hospital, and when a case
presents adapted to his purpose, he asks all those Questions which lead to a certain
knowledge of the Disease and parts Affected; and if the Disease baffles the power of
Art and the Patient falls a Sacrifice to it, he then brings his Knowledge to the Test,
and fixes Honour or discredit on his Reputation by exposing all the Morbid parts
to View, and Demonstrates by what means it produced Death, and if perchance he
finds something unexpected, which Betrays an Error in Judgement, he like a great
and good man immediately acknowledges the mistake, and, for the benefit of sur-
vivors, points out other methods by which it might have been more happily treated.""1
The writer of these sensible words fitly became our first professor of clinical medi-
cine,1 with unobstructed access to the one hundred and thirty patients then in the
hospital wards. Subsequently the faculty of the new school was increased and greatly
strengthened when Adam Kuhn, trained by Linnaeus, was made professor of materia
medica, and Benjamin Rush, already at twenty-four on the threshold of his brilliant
career, became professor of chemistry.

Our first medical school was thus soundly conceived as organically part of an in-
stitution of learning and intimately connected with a large public hospital. The
instruction aimed, as already pointed out, not to supplant, but to supplement ap-
prenticeship. A year's additional training, carrying the bachelor's degree, was offered
to students who, having demonstrated a competent knowledge of Latin, mathema-
tics, natural and experimental philosophy, and having served a sufficient apprentice-
ship to some reputable practitioner in physic, now completed a prescribed lecture
curriculum, with attendance upon the practice of the Pennsylvania Hospital for one

1 An essay on Th» Utility of Clinical Lecturgt, by Thomas Bond, 1766.

2 There is no record of Dr. Bond's appointment, but in the minutes of the Hospital trustees he "is
rcouested by the Trustees and Professors to continue his Clinical Lectures at the Hospital as a Branch
of Medical Education." Quoted by Packard: Hittory of Medicine in tht United State*, p. 201.

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 5

year. This course was well calculated to round off the young doctor's preparation,
reviewing and systematizing his theoretical acquisitions, while considerably extend-
ing his practical experience.

Before the outbreak of the Revolution, the young medical school was prosperously
started on its career. The war of course brought interruption and confusion. More
unfortunate still, for the time being, was the local rivalry — ominous as the first of
its kind — of the newly established medical department of the University of Penn-
sylvania; but wise counsels averted disaster, and in 1791 the two institutions joined
to form a single faculty, bearing, as it still bears, the name of the university, — the
earliest of a long and yet incomplete series of medical school mergers. Before the
close of the century three more " medical institutes," similar in style, had been started :
one in 1768 in New York, as the medical department of King's College, which, how-
ever, temporarily collapsed on the British occupation and was only indirectly restored
to vigor by union in 1814 with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, begun by
the Regents in 1807; another, the medical department of Harvard College, opened
in Cambridge in 1783, and twenty-seven years later removed to Boston so as to
gain access to the hospitals there;1 last of the group, the medical department of
Dartmouth College, started in 1798 by a Harvard graduate, Dr. Nathan Smith, who
was himself for twelve years practically its entire faculty — and a very able faculty at
that.

The sound start of these early schools was not long maintained. Their scholarly
ideals were soon compromised and then forgotten. True enough, from time to time
seats of learning continued to create medical departments, — Yale in 1810, Transyl-
vania in 1817, among others. But with the foundation early in the nineteenth cen-
tury at Baltimore of a proprietary school, the so-called medical department of the
so-called University of Maryland,2 a harmful precedent was established.3 Before that
a college of medicine had been a branch growing out of the living university trunk.

1 The removal took place in 1810. But definite arrangements for clinical teaching long remained vague.
Dr. R. C. Cabot quotes.the Harvard Catalogue of 1833 as follows : " The lectures for medical students
are delivered in Boston. . . . During lectures the students may find in the city various opportunities
for practical instruction." A hospital is first mentioned in 1835, " when it is stated that students may
attend the medical visits at the Massachusetts General Hospital." R. C. Cabot: "Sketch of the De-
velopment of the Department of Clinical Medicine," in Harvard Medical Alumni Quarterly, Jan., 1904,
p. 666.

2 In recent years an effort has been made to fill out the non-existent university by an affiliation with
St. John's College (Annapolis), whereby it becomes nominally the department of arts of the Univer-
sity of Maryland. This is, of course, a makeshift. A university begins with a school of arts and
sciences ; it cannot be formed of loosely associated schools of dentistry, pharmacy, and even law,
whether with or without still looser connection with a remote college of arts. Analogous in type are
the so-called medical departments of the Universities of Buffalo, Toledo, and Memphis, which at this
writing still lack academic affiliation. Their titles cannot disguise the fact that they are in essence in-
dependent medical schools, nor does a university charter make a university.

3 This was in imitation of London, as against the Edinburgh or the Leyden example, followed by the
four earlier schools. But the London schools never conferred the degree or gave the right to practise :
for the bestowal of degrees is the function of a university, the qualification for practice is determined
by the state. The American departure in both these respects developed evils from which England has
never suffered.

6 MEDICAL EDUCATION

This organic connection guaranteed certain standards and ideals, modest enough at
that time, but destined to a development which medical education could, as experi-
ence proved, ill afford to forego. Even had the university relation been preserved,
the precise requirements of the Philadelphia College would not indeed have been
permanently tenable. The rapid expansion of the country, with the inevitable decay
of the apprentice system in consequence, must necessarily have lowered the terms of
entrance upon the study. But for a time only : the requirements of medical educa-
tion would then have slowly risen with the general increase in our educational re-
sources. Medical education would have been part of the entire movement instead of
an exception to it. The number of schools would have been well within the number
of actual universities, in whose development as respects endowments, laboratories,
and libraries they would have partaken; and the country would have been spared
the demoralizing experience in medical education from which it is but now painfully
awakening.

Quite aside from the history, achievements, or present merits of any particular in-
dependent medical school, the creation of the type was the fertile source of unfore-
seen harm to medical education and to medical practice. Since that day medical col-
leges have multiplied without restraint, now by fission, now by sheer spontaneous
generation. Between 1810 and 1840, twenty-six new medical schools sprang up; be-
tween 1840 and 1876, forty-seven more;1 and the number actually surviving in 1876
has been since then much more than doubled. First and last, the United States and
Canada have in little more than a century produced four hundred and fifty-seven
medical schools, many, of course, short-lived, and perhaps fifty still-born.2 One
hundred and fifty-five survive to-day.5 Of these, Illinois, prolific mother of thirty-
nine medical colleges, still harbors in the city of Chicago fourteen ; forty-two sprang
from the fertile soil of Missouri, twelve of them still "going" concerns; the Empire
State produced forty -three, with eleven survivors;4 Indiana, twenty-seven, with two
survivors; Pennsylvania, twenty, with eight survivors; Tennessee, eighteen, with
nine survivors. The city of Cincinnati brought forth about twenty, the city of
Louisville eleven. These enterprises — for the most part they can be called schools
or institutions only by courtesy — were frequently set up regardless of opportunity
or need: in small towns as readily as in large, and at times almost in the heart of the
wilderness. No field, however limited, was ever effectually preempted. Wherever and
whenever the roster of untitled practitioners rose above half a dozen, a medical
school was likely at any moment to be precipitated. Nothing was really essential but

lContrib. to Hittory ofMed. Educat., N. S. Davis (Washington, 1877, p. 41).

•These were usually frauds, suppressed by police or by post-office departments. Postgraduate and
osteopathic schools are not included in these figures.

1 Including osteopathic schools, of which there are eight, but not including postgraduate schools, of
which there are thirteen, one of them in Kansas City without students at present. The last-named
institution retains its organization in order to obtain staff recognition at the Kansas City Hospital.

* Not including four postgraduate schools.

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 7

professors. The laboratory movement is comparatively recent; and Thomas Bond's
wise words about clinical teaching were long since out of print. Little or no invest-
ment was therefore involved. A hall could be cheaply rented and rude benches were
inexpensive. Janitor service was unknown and is even now relatively rare. Occasional
dissections in time supplied a skeleton — in whole or in part — and a box of odd
bones. Other equipment there was practically none. The teaching was, except for a
little anatomy, wholly didactic. The schools were essentially private ventures, money-
making in spirit and object. A school that began in October would graduate a class the
next spring; it mattered not that the course of study was two or three years ; immigra-
tion recruited a senior class at the start.1 Income was simply divided among the lec-
turers, who reaped a rich harvest, besides, through the consultations which the loyalty
of their former students threw into their hands. " Chairs " were therefore valuable pieces
of property, their prices varying with what was termed their "reflex" value: only re-
cently a professor in a now defunct Louisville school, who had agreed to pay $3000
for the combined chair of physiology and gynecology, objected strenuously to a di-
vision of the professorship assigning him physiology, on the ground of "failure of
consideration;" for the "reflex" which constituted the inducement to purchase went
obviously with the other subject.2 No applicant for instruction who could pay his
fees or sign his note was turned down/ State boards were not as yet in existence. The
school diploma was itself a license to practise. The examinations, brief, oral, and se-
cret, plucked almost none at all; even at Harvard, a student for whom a majority
of nine professors "voted" was passed.3 The man who had settled his tuition bill was
thus practically assured of his degree, whether he had regularly attended lectures or
not. Accordingly, the business throve. Rivalry between different so-called medical
centers was ludicrously bitter. Still more acrid were — and occasionally are — the local
animosities bound to arise in dividing or endeavoring to monopolize the spoils. Sud-
den and violent feuds thus frequently disrupted the faculties. But a split was rarely
fatal: it was more likely to result in one more school. Occasionally, a single too
masterful individual became the strategic object of a hostile faculty combination.
Daniel Drake, indomitable pioneer in medical education up and down the Ohio Val-
ley, thus tasted the ingratitude of his colleagues. As presiding officer of the faculty
of the Medical College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, cornered by a cabal of men, only a
year since indebted to him for their professorial titles and profits, he was compelled
to put a motion for his own expulsion and to announce to his enemies a large major-

1 This is recent as well as ancient history, e.g. :

Tufts College Medical School opened 1893 first class graduated 1894

Illinois Medical College 18»4 1885

Birmingham Medical College 1894 1895

College of Physjcians and Surgeons, Little Rock 1906 1907

College of Physicians and Surgeons, Memphis 1900 1907

2 The sale of chairs is not even now wholly unknown. At the North Carolina Medical College (Char-
lotte, N. C.) the faculty owns the stock, and the sale of one's stock carries with it one's chair.

3 There were at Harvard at one time only seven professors and an examination was conducted even
if only a majority was present.

8 MEDICAL EDUCATION

ity in its favor. It is pleasant to record that the indefatigable man was not daunted.
He continued from time to time to found schools and to fill professorships — at Lex-
ington, at Philadelphia, at Oxford in Ohio, at Louisville, and finally again in that
beloved Cincinnati, where he had been so hardly served. In the course of a busy
and fruitful career, he had occupied eleven different chairs in six different schools,
several of which he had himself founded ; and he had besides traversed the whole
country, as it then was, from Canada and the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and as far
westward as Iowa, collecting material for his great work, historically a classic, The
Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America.

In the wave of commercial exploitation which swept the entire profession so far
as medical education is concerned, the original university departments were practi-
cally torn from their moorings. The medical schools of Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania,
became, as they expanded, virtually independent of the institutions with which they
were legally united, and have had in our own day to be painfully won back to their
former status.1 For years they managed their own affairs, disposing of professor-
ships by common agreement, segregating and dividing fees, along proprietary lines.
In general, these indiscriminate and irresponsible conditions continued at their
worst until well into the eighties. To this day it is as easy to establish a medical
school as a business college,1 though the inducement and tendency to do so have
greatly weakened. Meanwhile, the entire situation had fundamentally altered. The
preceptorial system, soon moribund, had become nominal. The student registered in
the office of a physician whom he never saw again. He no longer read his master's
books, submitted to his quizzing, or rode with him the countryside in the enjoy-
ment of valuable bedside opportunities. All the training that a young doctor got
before beginning his practice had now to be procured within the medical school. The
school was no longer a supplement; it was everything. Meanwhile, the practice of
medicine was itself becoming quite another thing. Progress in chemical, biological,
and physical science was increasing the physician's resources, both diagnostic and
remedial. Medicine, hitherto empirical, was beginning to develop a scientific basis
and method. The medical schools had thus a different function to perform : it took
them upwards of half a century to wake up to the fact. The stethoscope had been
in use for over thirty years before, as Dr. Cabot notes,3 its first mention in the cata-
logue of the Harvard Medical School in 1868-9; the microscope is first mentioned

1The first step towards depriving the medical school of virtual autonomy was taken when the univer-
sity undertook to collect the fees and thenceforward to administer the finances of the department by
means of an annual budget. This took place at Harvard in 1871, at Yale in 1880, at the University
of Pennsylvania in 1896. The scope of the medical faculty has gradually shrunk since. Columbia,
which gave up its medical department to the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1814, contracted
a nominal relation with that school in I860; in 1891 the connection became organic.

* In New York, however, the chartering of educational institutions is in the hands of the Regents,
who have large powers. Nevertheless, they have recently given a limited charter to the Brooklyn
Postgraduate School, a corporation practically without resources and relying on hospital and student
fee income (the latter thus far small) to carry it through.
•Cabot, loc. cit., p. 673.

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 9

the following year. The schools had not noticed at all when the vital features of
the apprentice system dropped out. They continued along the old channel, their
ancient methods aggravated by rapid growth in the number of students and by the
lowering in the general level of their education and intelligence. Didactic lectures
were given in huge, badly lighted amphitheaters, and in these discourses the instruc-
tion almost wholly consisted. Personal contact between teacher and student, be-
tween student and patient, was lost. No consistent effort was made to adapt medical
training to changed circumstances. Many of the schools had no clinical facilities
whatsoever, and the absence of adequate clinical facilities is to this day not prohibi-
tive. The school session had indeed been lengthened to two sessions; but they were
of only sixteen to twenty weeks each. Moreover, the course was not graded and the
two classes were not separated. The student had two chances to hear one set of lec-
tures— and for the privilege paid two sets of fees. To this traffic many of the ablest
practitioners in the country were parties, and with little or no realization of its
enormity at that! "It is safe to say," said Henry J. Bigelow, professor of surgery
at Harvard in 1871, "that no successful school has thought proper to risk large
existing classes and large receipts in attempting a more thorough education."1 A
minority successfully wrung a measure of good from the vicious system which they
were powerless to destroy. They contrived to reach and to inspire the most capable
of their hearers. The best products of the system are thus hard to reconcile with the
system itself. Competent and humane physicians the country came to have, — at
whose and at what cost, one shudders to reflect; for the early patients of the rapidly
made doctors must have played an unduly large part in their practical training. An
annual and increasing exodus to Europe also did much to repair the deficiencies of
students who would not have neglected better opportunities at home. The Edin-
burgh and London tradition, maintained by John Bell, Abernethy, and Sir Astley
Cooper, persisted well into the century. In the thirties, Paris became the medical
student's Mecca, and the statistical and analytical study of disease, which is the dis-
criminating mark of modern scientific medicine, was thence introduced into America
by the pupils of Louis,2 — the younger Jackson, "dead ere his prime," Gerhard, and
their successors. With the generation succeeding the civil war, the tide turned decisively
towards Germany, and thither continues to set. These men subsequently became
teachers in the colleges at Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charleston, and else-
where; and from them the really capable and energetic students got much. One
of the latter, who in recent years has wielded perhaps the greatest single influence in
the country towards the reconstruction of medical education, says of his own school,
the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, in the early seventies: "One
can decry the system of those days, the inadequate preliminary requirements, the
short courses, the dominance of the didactic lecture, the meager appliances for

1 Medical Education in America, by Henry J. Bigelow, Cambridge, the University Press, 1871, p. 79.
a Osier : • ' Influence of Louis on Modern Medicine, " Bulletin Johns Hopkins Hospital, vol. iii. , nos. 77, 78.

10 MEDICAL EDUCATION

demonstrative and practical instruction, but the results were better than the system.
Our teachers were men of fine character, devoted to the duties of their chairs; they
inspired us with enthusiasm, interest in our studies and hard work, and they imparted
to us sound traditions of our profession ; nor did they send us forth so utterly igno-
rant and unfitted for professional work as those born of the present greatly improved
methods of training and opportunities for practical studies are sometimes wont to
suppose. Clinical and demonstrative teaching for undergraduates already existed. Of
laboratory training there was none.1" l As much could perhaps be said of a half-dozen
other institutions. The century was therefore never without brilliant names in ana-
tomy, medicine, and surgery; but they can hardly be cited in extenuation of condi-
tions over which unusual gifts and perseverance alone could triumph. Those con-
ditions made uniform and thorough teaching impossible; and they utterly forbade
the conscientious elimination of the incompetent and the unfit.

From time to time, of course, the voice of protest was heard, but it was for years
a voice crying in the wilderness. Delegates from medical schools and societies met at
Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1827, and agreed upon certain recommendations
lengthening the term of medical study and establishing a knowledge of Latin and
natural philosophy as preliminary thereto. The Yale Medical School actually went
so far as to procure legislation to this end. But it subsequently beat a retreat when
it found itself isolated in its advanced position, its quondam allies having failed to
march.2 As far back as 1835, the Medical College of Georgia had vainly suggested
concerted action looking to more decent methods; but no step was taken until, eleven
years later, an agitation set up by Nathan Smith Davis resulted in the formation of
the American Medical Association, committed to two propositions, viz.) that it is
desirable "that young men received as students of medicine should have acquired a
suitable preliminary education," and "that a uniform elevated standard of require-
ments for the degree of M.D. should be adopted by all the medical schools in the
United States." This was in 1846; much water has flowed under the bridge since
then; and though neither of these propositions has even yet been realized, there is no
denying that, especially in the last fifteen years, substantial progress has been made.

In the first place, the course has now at length been generally graded * and ex-

1Wm. H. Welch: "Development of American Medicine," Columbia Unwerrity Quarterly Supple-
ment, Dec., 1907.

1 Wm. H. Welch : " The Relation of Yale to Medicine " (reprinted from Yale Medical Journal for Nov.,
1901), p. 20, and note 28, pp. 30, 31.

•A certain amount of ungraded teaching is still to be found, especially in the south and west. For
example, at Chattanooga, no examinations are held at the close of the first year ; the examinations at
the close of the second year are supposed to cover two years' work, the practical outcome of which
is obvious. More frequently, clinical lectures are delivered to the juniors and seniors together, — at
least, as far as a single amphitheater is capable of containing the combined classes. This is the case
at the University of Louisville. At certain other schools, the work is only partially graded, e.g., the
Memphis Hospital Medical College, Tennessee Medical College, University of Arkansas, Birmingham
Medical College, Ensworth Medical College (St. Joseph. Mo.), Hahnemann, San Francisco, Kansas
Medical (Topeka), Woman's Medical (Baltimore), Maryland Medical, Mississippi Medical, American

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 11

tended to four years, still varying, however, from six l to nine months each in du-
ration. Didactic teaching has been much mitigated. Almost without exception the
schools furnish some clinical teaching; many of them provide a fair amount, though
it is still only rarely used to the best teaching advantage; a few are quite adequately
equipped in this respect. Relatively quicker and greater progress has been made on
the laboratory side since, in 1878,2 Dr. Francis Delafield established the laboratory
of the Alumni Association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York ; 3
in the same autumn Dr. William H. Welch opened the pathological laboratory of
the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, from which, six years later, he was called to
organize the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. It is at length everywhere
conceded that the prospective student of medicine should prove his fitness for the
undertaking. Not a few schools rest on a substantial admission basis ; the others have
not yet abandoned the impossible endeavor at one and the same time to pay their own
way and to live up to standards whose reasonableness they cannot deny. Finally, the
creation of state boards has compelled a greater degree of conscientiousness in teach-
ing, though in many places, unfortunately, far too largely the conscientiousness of
the drillmaster.

In consequence of the various changes thus briefly recounted, the number of med-
ical schools has latterly declined. Within a twelvemonth a dozen have closed their
doors. Many more are obviously gasping for breath. Practically without exception,
the independent schools are scanning the horizon in search of an unoccupied univer-
sity harbor. It has, in fact, become virtually impossible for a medical school to com-
ply even in a perfunctory manner with statutory, not to say scientific, requirements
and show a profit. The medical school that distributes a dividend to its professors
or pays for buildings out of fees must cut far below the standards which its own
catalogue probably alleges. Nothing has perhaps done more to complete the dis-
credit of commercialism than the fact that it has ceased to pay. It is but a short
step from an annual deficit to the conclusion that the whole thing is wrong anyway.

In the first place, however, the motive power towards better conditions came from
genuine professional and scientific conviction. The credit for the actual initiative
belongs fairly to the institutions that had the courage and the virtue to make
the start. The first of these was the Chicago school, which is now the medical de-
Medical (St. Louis), St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons, Barnes Medical, Western Eclec-
tic (Kansas City), Eclectic Medical (New York), Eclectic Institute (Cincinnati).
1The low-grade southern schools have a nominal seven months' course; but as they allow students
to enter without penalty several weeks later and have liberal Christmas holidays besides, the course
is actually less than six months.

2 Prior to this date Drs. Francis Delafield, E. G. Janeway, and others had given courses at Bellevue
Hospital and elsewhere in histology, pathology, etc. See George C. Freeborn : History of the Associa-
tion of the Alumni of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, p. 10, etc. Instruction in
pathological anatomy in the Harvard Medical School had begun in 1870 with the appointment of
Dr. R. H. Fitz to an instructorship in that subject.

5 This laboratory was at first independent of the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

12 MEDICAL EDUCATION

partment of Northwestern University, and which in 1859 initiated a three-year
graded course. Early in the seventies the new president of Harvard College startled
the bewildered faculty of its medical school into the first of a series of reforms that
began with the grading of the existing course and ended in 1901 with the require-
ment of an academic degree for admission.1 In the process, the university obtained
the same sort of control over its medical department that it exercises elsewhere.2
Towards this consummation President Eliot had aimed from the start; but he was
destined to be anticipated by the establishment in 1893 of the Johns Hopkins Med-
ical School on the basis of a bachelors degree, from which, with quite unprecedented
academic virtue, no single exception has ever been made.8 This was the first medical
school in America of genuine university type, with something approaching adequate
endowment, well equipped laboratories conducted by modern teachers, devoting them-
selves unreservedly to medical investigation and instruction, and with its own hospital,
in which the training of physicians and the healing of the sick harmoniously combine
to the infinite advantage of both. The influence of this new foundation can hardly
be overstated. It has finally cleared up the problem of standards and ideals; and its
graduates have gone forth in small bands to found new establishments or to recon-
struct old ones. In the sixteen years that have since elapsed, fourteen more institu-
tions have actually advanced to the basis of two or more years of college work ; others
have undertaken shortly to do so. Besides these, there are perhaps a dozen other
more or less efficient schools whose entrance requirements hover hazily about high
school graduation. In point of organization, the thirty-odd schools now supplying
the distinctly better quality of medical training are not as yet all of university type.
Thither they are unquestionably tending; for the moment, however, the very best
and some of the very worst* are alike known as university departments. Not a few
so-called university medical departments are such in name only. They are practically
independent enterprises, to which some university has good-naturedly lent its pres-
tige. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago is the medical department
of the University of Illinois, but the relation between them is purely contractual ;
the state university contributes nothing to its support The Southwestern University
of Texas possesses a medical department at Dallas, but the university is legally
protected against all responsibility for its debts.5 These fictitious alignments retard

1Seepage28.

1 A vein of unmistakable uneasiness runs through Bigelow's address on Medical Education in America,
previously referred to: "Most American medical colleges are virtually close corporations, . . . ad-
ministered by their professors, who receive the students' fees, and upon whose tact and ability the
success of these institutions depends. A university possesses over all its departments a legal jurisdic-
tion ; but it may be a question of expediency how far this shall be enforced" (p. 59).

•See, however, p. 28.

*«.a.. University of Arkansas, Willamette University, Cotner University (Lincoln, Nebraska), West-
ern University (London, Ontario), Epworth University, Fort Worth University, etc.

•Other university departments of this nominal character are: medical department of the University
of Arkansas (Little Rock); College of Physicians and Surgeons (Los Angeles), which is nominally
the medical department of the University of Southern California; Denver and Gross College of

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 13

the readjustment of medical education through further reduction in the number of
schools, because the institutions involved are enabled to live on hope for perhaps
another decade or more. It is important that our universities realize that medical
education is a serious and costly venture; and that they should reject or terminate
all connection with a medical school unless prepared to foot its bills and to pitch its
instruction on a university plane. In Canada conditions have never become so badly
demoralized as in the United States. There the best features of English clinical
teaching had never been wholly forgotten. Convalescence from a relatively mild over-
indulgence in commercial medical schools set in earlier and is more nearly completed.

With the creation of the heterogeneous situation thus bequeathed to us, it is clear
that consideration for the public good has had on the whole little to do; nor is it to
be expected that this situation will very readily readjust itself in response to public
need. A powerful and profitable vested interest tenaciously resists criticism from that
point of view; not, of course, openly. It is too obvious that if the sick are to reap
the full benefit of recent progress in medicine, a more uniformly arduous and expen-
sive medical education is demanded. But it is speciously argued that improvements
thus accomplished will do more harm than good: for whatever makes medical edu-
cation more difficult and more costly will deplete the profession and thus deprive
large numbers of all medical attention whatsoever, in order that a fortunate minority
may get the best possible care. It is important to forestall the issue thus raised;
otherwise it will crop out at every turn of the following discussion, in the effort to
justify the existing situation and to break the force of constructive suggestion. It
seems, therefore, necessary to refer briefly at this point to the statistical aspects of
medical education in America, so far as they are immediately pertinent to the ques-
tion of improvement and reform.

The problem is of course practical and not academic. Pending the homogeneous
filling up of the whole country, inequalities must be tolerated. Man has been not in-
aptly differentiated as the animal with "the desire to take medicine."1 When sick,
he craves the comfort of the doctor, — any doctor rather than none at all, and in this
he will not be denied. The question is, then, not merely to define the ideal training
of the physician; it is just as much, at this particular juncture, to strike the solution
that, economic and social factors being what they are, will distribute as widely as
possible the best type of physician so distributable. Doubtless the chaos above char-
acterized is in part accounted for by crude conditions that laughed at regular me-
thods of procedure. But this stage of our national existence has gone by. What with
widely ramifying railroad and trolley service, improving roads, automobiles, and

Medicine, which is nominally the medical department of the University of Denver; School of Medi-
cine of the University of Georgia; Albany (New York) Medical College, which is nominally the
medical department of Union TJniversity; medical department of Western University (London,
Ont.), etc. For none of these alliances is there a valid reason; on the contrary, there is in every
instance a good reason why the university concerned should break off the connection.

1 Osier: Aequanimitas, p. 131.

14

MEDICAL EDUCATION

rural telephones, we have measurably attained some of the practical consequences of
homogeneity. The experience of older countries is therefore suggestive, even if not
altogether conclusive.

Professor Paulsen, describing in his book on the German Universities the increased
importance of the medical profession, reports with some astonishment that "the
number of physicians has increased with great rapidity so that now there is, in Ger-
many, one doctor for every 2000 souls, and in the large cities one for every 1000."1
What would the amazed philosopher have said had he known that in the entire
United States there is already on the average one doctor for every 568 persons, that
in our large cities there is frequently one doctor for every 400 a or less, that many
small towns with less than 200 inhabitants each have two or three physicians apiece!8

Over-production is stamped on the face of these facts ; and if, in its despite, there
are localities without a physician, it is clear that even long-continued over-produc-
tion of cheaply made doctors cannot force distribution beyond a well marked point.
In our towns health is as good and physicians probably as alert as in Prussia; there
is, then, no reason to fear an unheeded call or a too tardy response, if urban commu-
nities support one doctor for every 2000 inhabitants. On that showing, the towns
have now four or more doctors for every one that they actually require, — something
worse than waste, for the superfluous doctor is usually a poor doctor. So enormous
an overcrowding with low-grade material both relatively and absolutely decreases
the number of well trained men who can count on the profession for a livelihood.
According to Gresham's law, which, as has been shrewdly remarked, is as valid in edu-
cation as in finance, the inferior medium tends to displace the superior. If then, by
having in cities one doctor for every 2000 persons, we got four times as good a doc-
tor as now when we provide one doctor for every 500 or less, the apothecaries would
find time hanging somewhat more heavily on their hands. Clearly, low standards
and poor training are not now needed in order to supply physicians to the towns.

1 Thilly's translation, p. 400.

2 New York, 1 : 460 ; Chicago, 1 : 580 ; Washington, 1 : 270 ; San Francisco, 1 : 370. These ratios are
calculated on the basis of figures obtained from Folk's Medical Register, the American Medical Direc-
tory, and estimates prepared by the U. S. Census Bureau. The force of the figures as to the number
of physicians cannot be broken by urging that many physicians no longer practise. Such have been
carefully excluded by the compilers of the American Medical Directory. Figures used throughout
this report were obtained from these sources.

3 Examples may be cited at random from every section of the country in proof of the fact that over-
crowding is general, not merely local or exceptional, e.g. :

Ohio:

Killbrook, population 807. has three doctors

Houston

227

•

Texas: Wellington

87

five

Whitt

378

four

Whitney

7M

•ix

Massachusetts: Colerain

80

two

Harding

100

U

Nebraska: Eustin

292

*

Crofton

40

u

Oregon: K..-,il

870

U.

Oaston

182

•

(Prom the American Medical Directory. 1000.)

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 15

In the country the situation follows one of two types. Assuming that a thousand
people in an accessible area will support a competent physician, one of two things
will happen if the district contains many less. In a growing country, like Canada
or our own middle west, the young graduate will not hesitate to pitch his tent in a
sparsely settled neighborhood, if it promises a future. A high-grade and comparatively
expensive education will not alter his inclination to do this. The more exacting
Canadian laws rouse no objection on this score. The graduates of McGill and Toronto
have passed through a scientific and clinical discipline of high quality ; but one finds
them every year draining off into the freshly opened Northwest Territory. In truth,
it is an old story. McDowell left the Kentucky backwoods to spend two years under
Bell in Edinburgh; and when they were over, returned contentedly to the wilderness,
where he originated the operation for ovarian tumor in the course of a surgical
practice that carried him back and forth through Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Benjamin Dudley, son of a poor Baptist preacher, dissatisfied with the results first of
his apprenticeship, then of his Philadelphia training, hoarded his first fees, and with
them subsequently embarked temporarily in trade ; he loaded a flat-boat with sun-
dries, which he disposed of to good advantage at New Orleans, there investing in a
cargo of flour, which he sold to the hungry soldiers of Wellington in the Spanish
peninsula. The profits kept Dudley in the hospitals of Paris for four years, after
which he came back to Lexington, and for a generation was the great surgeon and
teacher of surgery in the rough country across the Alleghanies. The pioneer is not
yet dead within us. The self-supporting students of Ann Arbor and Toronto prove
this. For a region which holds out hope, there is no need to make poor doctors, —
still less to make too many of them.

In the case of stranded small groups in an unpromising environment the thing
works out differently. A century of reckless over-production of cheap doctors has re-
sulted in general overcrowding; but it has not forced doctors into these hopeless
spots. It has simply huddled them thickly at points on the extreme margin. Certain
rural communities of New England may, for example, have no physician in their
midst, though they are in most instances not inaccessible to one. But let never so
many low-grade doctors be turned out, whether in Boston or in smaller places like
Burlington or Brunswick, that are supposed not to spoil the young man for a
country practice, these unpromising places, destined perhaps to disappear from the
map, will not attract them. They prefer competition in some already over-occupied
field. Thus, in Vermont, Burlington, the seat of the medical department of the Uni-
versity of Vermont, with a population of less than 21,000, has 60 physicians, one for
every 333 inhabitants;1 nor can these figures be explained away on the ground that
the largest city in the state is a vortex which absorbs more than its proper share;
for the state abounds in small towns in which several doctors compete in the service
of less than a thousand persons: Post Mills, with 105 inhabitants, has two doctors ;
1 American Medical Directory; Polk (1908) gives 75 active physicians, a ratio of 1 :280.

16 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Jeffersonville, with 400, has two; Plainfield, with 341, has three. Other New England
states are in the same case. It would appear, then, that over-production on a low
basis does not effectually overcome the social or economic obstacles to spontaneous
dispersion. Perhaps the salvation of these districts might, under existing circum-
stances, be better worked out by a different method. A large area would support one
good man, where its separate fragments are each unable to support even one poor
man. A physician's range, actual and virtual, increases with his competency. A well
qualified doctor may perhaps at a central point set up a small hospital, where the
seriously ill of the entire district may receive good care. The region is thus better
served by one well trained man than it could possibly be even if over-production on
a low basis ultimately succeeded in forcing an incompetent into every hamlet of five
and twenty souls. This it cannot compel. It cannot keep even the cheap man in a
place without a "chance;" it can only demoralize the smaller places which are ca-
pable of supporting a better trained man whose energies may also reach out into the
more thinly settled surrounding country. As a last resort, it might conceivedly be-
come the duty of the several states to salary district physicians in thinly settled or
remote regions, — surely a sounder policy than the demoralization of the entire pro-
fession for the purpose of enticing ill trained men where they will not go.1 We may
safely conclude that our methods of carrying on medical education have resulted in
enormous over-production at a low level, and that, whatever the justification in the
past, the present situation in town and country alike can be more effectively met by a
reduced output of well trained men than by further inflation with an inferior product.
The improvement of medical education cannot therefore be resisted on the ground
that it will destroy schools and restrict output : that is precisely what is needed. The
illustrations already given in support of this position may be reinforced by further
examples from every section of the Union, — from Pennsylvania with one doctor for
every 636 inhabitants, Maryland with one for every 658, Nebraska with one for every
602, Colorado with one for every 328, Oregon with one for every 646. It is frequently
urged that, however applicable to other sections, this argument does not for the pre-
sent touch the south, where continued tolerance of commercial methods is required
by local conditions. Let us briefly consider the point. The section as a whole contains
one doctor for every 760 persons. In the year 1908, twelve states2 showed a gain in
population of 358,837. If now we allow in cities one additional physician for every
increase of 2000, and outside cities an additional one for every increase of 1000 in
population, — an ample allowance in any event, — we may in general figure on one more
physician for every gain of 1500 in total population. We are not now arguing that
a ratio of 1 : 1500 is correct; we are under no necessity of proving that. Our conten-

1 These officials would combine the duties of county health officer with those now assigned in large
towns to the city physician.

'This includes Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas.

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 17

tion is simply that, starting with our present overcrowded condition, production
henceforth at the ratio of one physician to every increase of 1500 in population will
prevent a shortage, for the next generation at least. In 1908 the south, then, needed
240 more doctors to take care of its increase in population. In the course of the same
year, it is estimated that 500 vacancies in the profession were due to death.1 If every
vacancy thus arising must be filled, conditions will never improve. Let us agree to work
towards a more normal adjustment by filling two vacancies due to death with one new
physician, — once more, a decidedly liberal provision. This will prove sufficiently de-
liberate; it would have called for 250 more doctors by the close of the year. In all,
490 new men would have amply cared for the increase in population and the vacancies
due to death. As a matter of fact, the southern medical schools turned out in that year
1144 doctors; 78 more southerners were graduated from the schools of Baltimore and
Philadelphia. The grand total would probably reach 1300, — 1300 southern doctors to
compete in a field in which one- third of the number would find the making of a decent
living already difficult. Clearly, the south has no cause to be apprehensive inconsequence
of a reduced output of higher quality.2 Its requirements in the matter of a fresh sup-
ply are not such as to make it necessary to pitch their training excessively low.

The rest of the country may be rapidly surveyed from the same point of view.
The total gain in population, outside the southern states already considered, was
975,008, — requiring on the basis of one more doctor for every 1500 more people,
650 doctors. By death, in the course of the year there were in the same area 1730
vacancies. Replacing two vacancies by one doctor, 865 men would have been re-
quired ; in most sections public interest would be better cared for if they all remained
unfilled for a decade to come. On the most liberal calculation, 1500 graduates would
be called for, and 1000 would be better still. There were actually produced in that
year, outside the south, 3497, i.e., between two and three times as many as the country
could possibly assimilate; and this goes on, and has been going on, every year.

It appears, then, that the country needs fewer and better doctors; and that the
way to get them better is to produce fewer. To support all or most present schools
at the higher level would be wasteful, even if it were not impracticable; for they can-

1 Based on figures collected by the American Medical Association.

2 As Kentucky is one of the largest producers of low-grade doctors in the entire Union, it is interest-
ing to observe conditions there. The following is the result of a careful study of Henderson County
made for me by one thoroughly acquainted with it.

Total population, 35,000 ; number of doctors, 56 ; ratio, 1 : 624.

DISTRIBUTION
Place

City of Henderson
Anthaston
Baskett
Cairo
Corydon
Dixie
Geneva
Hebardsville

Throughout the county there are doctors within five miles everywhere.

Population

No. Drs. 1

tatio

Place

Population

No. Drs. J

*tatio

17,500

27 1

1:644

Zion

250

S

:84

24

1 ]

1:24

Robards

500

9 1

: 187

200

2

:100

Niagara

100

9

:94

200

1

:200

McDonald's Landing

25

1,000

4

:250

Alzey

25

1

:25

900

1

:300

Smith Mills

200

9

:«7

100

2

:50

Spottsville

700

9

:294

400

2

:200

i

18 MEDICAL EDUCATION

not be manned. Some day, doubtless, posterity may reestablish a school in some
place where a struggling enterprise ought now to be discontinued. Towards that
remote contingency nothing will, however, be gained by prolonging the life of the
existent institution.

The statistics just given have never been compiled or studied by the average
medical educator. His stout asseveration that "the country needs more doctors" is
based on "the letters on file in the dean's office," or on some hazy notion respecting
conditions in neighboring states. As to the begging letters: selecting a thinly set-
tled region, I obtained from the dean of the medical department of the University
of Minnesota a list of the localities whence requests for a physician have recently
come. With few exceptions, they represent five states:1 fifty-nine towns in Minne-
sota want a doctor ; but investigation shows that these fifty-nine towns have already
one hundred and forty-nine doctors between them !2 Forty-one places in North Dakota
apply ; they have already one hundred and twenty-one doctors. Twenty-one applica-
tions come from South Dakota, from towns having already forty-nine doctors; seven
from Wisconsin, from places that had twenty -one physicians before their prayer for
more was made; six from Iowa, from towns that had seventeen doctors at the time.
It is clear that the files of the deans will not invalidate the conclusion which a study
of the figures suggests. They are more apt to sustain it: for the requests in question
are less likely to mean "no doctor" than poor doctors,3 — a distemper which con-
tinued over-production on the same basis can only aggravate, and which a change to
another of the same type will not cure. As to general conditions, no case has been
found in which a single medical educator contended that his own vicinity or state
is in need of more doctors: it is always the "next neighbor." Thus the District of
Columbia, with one doctor for every two hundred and sixty-two souls, maintains
two low-grade medical schools. "Do you need more doctors in the District?" was
asked of one of the deans. "Oh, no, we are making doctors for Maryland, Virginia,
and Pennsylvania," — for Maryland, with seven medical schools of its own and one
doctor for every six hundred and fifty-eight inhabitants; for Virginia, with three
medical schools of its own and one doctor for every nine hundred and eighteen; for
Pennsylvania, with its eight schools and one doctor for every six hundred and thirty-
six persons.

With the over-production thus demonstrated, the commercial treatment of medi-
cal education is intimately connected. Low standards give the medical schools ac-
cess to a large clientele open to successful exploitation by commercial methods. The

1 The general distribution in these states shows that over-production prevails in new states as in old
ones : Minnesota 1 : 981 ; South Dakota 1 : 821 ; Iowa 1 : 605; North Dakota 1 : 971 ; Wisconsin 1 : 936.

* Ten of the fifty-nine were without registered physicians ; but of these ten, two are not to be found
on the map, two more are not in the Postal Guide; of the other six, four are in easy reach of doctors ;
two, with a combined population of one hundred and fifty, are out of reach.

8 Occasionally these applications, which create the impression of a dearth, come from apothecaries
who have a rear office to rent, a physician with a practice to sell, etc.

HISTORICAL AND GENERAL 19

crude boy or the jaded clerk who goes into medicine at this level has not been moved
by a significant prompting from within; nor has he as a rule shown any forethought
in the matter of making himself ready. He is more likely to have been caught drift-
ing at a vacant moment by an alluring advertisement or announcement, quite com-
monly an exaggeration, not infrequently an outright misrepresentation. Indeed, the
advertising methods of the commercially successful schools are amazing.1 Not infre-
quently advertising costs more than laboratories. The school catalogues abound in
exaggeration, misstatement, and half-truths.3 The deans of these institutions occasion-
ally know more about modern advertising than about modern medical teaching. They
may be uncertain about the relation of the clinical laboratory to bedside instruction ;
but they have calculated to a nicety which "medium" brings the largest "return."
Their dispensary records may be in hopeless disorder; but the card system by which
they keep track of possible students is admirable. Such exploitation of medical edu-
cation, confined to schools that admit students below the level of actual high school
graduation, is strangely inconsistent with the social aspects of medical practice. The
overwhelming importance of preventive medicine, sanitation, and public health
indicates that in modern life the medical profession is an organ differentiated by so-
ciety for its own highest purposes, not a business to be exploited by individuals ac-
cording to their own fancy. There would be no vigorous campaigns led by enlight-
ened practitioners against tuberculosis, malaria, and diphtheria, if the commercial
point of view were tolerable in practice. And if not in practice, then not in educa-
tion. The theory of state regulation covers that point. In the act of granting the
right to confer degrees, the state vouches for them ; through protective boards it still
further seeks to safeguard the people. The public interest is then paramount, and
when public interest, professional ideals, and sound educational procedure concur
in the recommendation of the same policy, the time is surely ripe for decisive action.

1 One school offers any graduate who shall have been in attendance three years a European trip.

2 See chapter viii., " Financial Aspects of Medical Education," especially p. 135.

3 A few instances may be cited at random :

Medical Department, University of Buffalo: "The dispensary is conducted in a manner unlike that
usually seen. . . . Each one will secure unusually thorough training in taking and recording of his-
tories (p. 25). There are no dispensary records worthy the name.

Halifax Medical College: "First-class laboratory accommodation is provided for histology, bacte-
riology and practical pathology" (p. 9). One utterly wretched room is provided for all three.

Medical Department, University of Illinois: "The University Hospital ... contains one hundred
beds, and its clinical advantages are used exclusively for the students of this college " (p. 56). Over
half of these beds are private, and the rest are of but limited use.

Western University (London, Ontario): Clinical instruction. "The Victoria Hospital . . . now con-
tains two hundred and fifty beds, and is the official hospital of the City of London," etc. (p. 14). On
the average, less than thirty of these beds are available for teaching.

The Medical Department of the University of Chattanooga : "The latest advances" are taught "in
the most entertaining and instructive manner;" professors are "chosen for their proficiency ;' "spec-
ulative research pertains " to the department of physiology ; the department of pathology is " pro-
vided with a costly collection of specimens and generous supply of the best microscopes (one, as a
matter of fact); " the hospitals afford numerous cases of labor' !

CHAPTER II

THE PROPER BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION

WE have in the preceding chapter briefly indicated three stages in the develop-
ment of medical education in America, — the preceptorship, the didactic school,
the scientific discipline. We have seen how an empirical training of varying
excellence, secured through attendance on a preceptor, gave way to the didactic
method, which simply communicated a set body of doctrines of very uneven value;
how in our own day this didactic school has capitulated to a procedure that seeks,
as far as may be, to escape empiricism in order to base the practice of medicine on
observed facts of the same order and cogency as pass muster in other fields of pure
and applied science. The apprentice saw disease; the didactic pupil heard and read
about it; now once more the medical student returns to the patient, whom in the
main he left when he parted with his preceptor. But he returns, relying no longer
altogether on the senses with which nature endowed him, but with those senses made
infinitely more acute, more accurate, and more helpful by the processes and the in-
struments which the last half-century's progress has placed at his disposal. This is
the meaning of the altered aspect of medical training : the old preceptor, be he never
so able, could at best feel, see, smell, listen, with his unaided senses. His achieve-
ments are not indeed to be lightly dismissed; for his sole reliance upon his senses
greatly augmented their power. Succeed as he might, however, his possibilities in the
way of reducing, differentiating, and interpreting phenomena, or significant aspects
of phenomena, were abruptly limited by his natural powers. These powers are nowa-
days easily enough transcended. The self-registering thermometer, the stethoscope, the
microscope, the correlation of observed symptoms with the outgivings of chemical
analysis and biological experimentation, enormously extend the physician's range.
He perceives more speedily and more accurately what he is actually dealing with;
he knows with far greater assurance the merits or the limitations of the agents which
he is in position to invoke. Though the field of knowledge and certainty is even yet
far from coextensive with the field of disease and injury, it is, as far as it goes, open
to quick, intelligent, and effective action.

Provided, of course, the physician is himself competent to use the instrumentali-
ties that have been developed! There is just now the rub. Society reaps at this mo-
ment but a small fraction of the advantage which current knowledge has the power
to confer. That sick man is relatively rare for whom actually all is done that is at
this day humanly feasible, — as feasible in the small hamlet as in the large city, in
the public hospital as in the private sanatorium. We have indeed in America medi-
cal practitioners not inferior to the best elsewhere; but there is probably no other
country in the world in which there is so great a distance and so fatal a difference
between the best, the average, and the worst.

PROPER BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 21

The attempt will be made in this chapter and the next to account for these dis-
crepancies in so far as they are traceable to circumstances that antedate the formal
beginning of medical education itself. The mastery of the resources of the profession
in the modern sense is conditioned upon certain definite assumptions, touching the
medical student's education and intelligence. Under the apprentice system, it was not
necessary to establish any such general or uniform basis. The single student was in
personal contact with his preceptor. If he were young or immature, the preceptor
could wait upon his development, initiating him in simple matters as they arose,
postponing more difficult ones to a more propitious season ; meanwhile, there were
always the horses to be curried and the saddle-bags to be replenished. In the end, if
the boy proved incorrigibly dull, the perceptor might ignore him till a convenient
excuse discontinued the relation. During the ascendancy of the didactic school, it was
indeed essential to good results that lecturers and quizmasters should be able to
gauge the general level of their huge classes ; but this level might well be low, and
in the common absence of conscientiousness usually fell far below the allowable
minimum. In any event, the student's part was, parrot-like, to absorb. His medical
education consisted largely in getting by heart a prearranged system of correspon-
dences,— an array of symptoms so set off against a parallel array of doses that,
if he noticed the one, he had only to write down the other: a coated tongue — a
course of calomel; a shivery back — a round of quinine. What the student did not
readily apprehend could be drilled1 into him — towards examination time — by
those who had themselves recently passed through the ordeal which he was now
approaching; and an efficient apparatus that spared his senses and his intellect as
entirely as the drillmaster spared his industry was readily accessible at tempt-
ingly low prices in the shape of "essentials" and "quiz-compends." Thus he got, and
in places still gets, his materia medica, anatomy, obstetrics, and surgery. The med-
ical schools accepted the situation with so little reluctance that these compends
were — and occasionally still are — written by the professors2 and sold on the pre-

1"A reiteration of undisputed facts in their simplest expression," is Bigelow's way of putting it. Loe.
cit., p. 11.

2 From the last catalogues of certain medical publishers :

" QUIZ-COMPENDS : "

Physiology, by A. P. Brubaker, Professor of Physiology, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia.

Oynecology, by Wm. H. Wells, Demonstrator of Clinical Obstetrics, Jefferson Medical College,

Philadelphia.

Surgery, by Orville Horwitz, Prof, of Genito-Urinary Surgery, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia.

Diseases of Children, by Marcus P. Hatfield, Professor of Diseases of Children, Chicago Medical College.

Special Pathology, by A. E. Thayer, Professor of Pathology, University of Texas.

"ESSENTIALS:"

Surgery, by Edward Martin, Professor of Clinical Surgery, University of Pennsylvania.

Anatomy, by C. B. Nancrede, Professor of Surgery, University of Michigan.

Obstetrics, by W. E. Ashton, Professor of Gynecology, Medico-Chirurgical College, Philadelphia.

Oynecology, by E. B. Cragin, Professor of Obstetrics, Columbia University.

Histology, by Louis Leroy, Professor of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Memphis.

Diseases of the Skin, by H. W. Stelwagon, Prof, of Dermatology, Jefferson Medical College, Phila.

Diseases of the Eye, by Edward Jackson, Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Colorado.

22 MEDICAL EDUCATION

raises.1 Under such a regime anybody could, as President Eliot remarked, "walk into
a medical school from the street," and small wonder that of those who did walk in,
many "could barely read and write."2 But with the advent of the laboratory, in which
every student possesses a locker where his individual microscope, reagents, and other
paraphernalia are stored for his personal use; with the advent of the small group bed-
side clinic, in which every student is responsible for a patient's history and for a trial
diagnosis, suggested, confirmed, or modified by his own microscopical and chemical
examination of blood, urine, sputum, and other tissues, the privileges of the medical
school can no longer be open to casual strollers from the highway. It is necessary to
install a doorkeeper who will, by critical scrutiny, ascertain the fitness of the appli-
cant: a necessity suggested in the first place by consideration for the candidate,
whose time and talents will serve him better in some other vocation, if he be unfit
for this; and in the second, by consideration for a public entitled to protection from
those whom the very boldness of modern medical strategy equips with instruments
that, tremendously effective for good when rightly used, are all the more terrible
for harm if ignorantly or incompetently employed.

A distinct issue is here presented. A medical school may, the law permitting, eschew
clinics and laboratories, cling to the didactic type of instruction, and arrange its
dates so as not to conflict with seedtime and harvest ; or it may equip laboratories,
develop a dispensary, and annex a hospital, pitching its entrance requirements on a
basis in keeping with its opportunities and pretensions. But it cannot consistently
open the latter type of school to the former type of student. It cannot provide
laboratory and bedside instruction on the one hand, and admit crude, untrained boys
on the other. The combination is at once illogical and futile. The funds of the school
may indeed procure facilities; but the intelligence of the students can alone ensure
their proper use. Nor can the dilemma be evaded by alleging that a small amount
of laboratory instruction administered to an unprepared medical student makes a
"practitioner," while the more thorough training of a competent man makes a "sci-
entist."* At the level at which under the most favorable circumstances the medical
student gets his education, it is absurd to speak of an inherent conflict between science
and practice. We shall have occasion later to touch on the relation of teaching and

1 For example, in the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons ; Medical Department, University
of Nashville ; North Carolina Medical College (Charlotte); Medical Department, University of Pitts-
burgh; John A. Creighton Medical College (Omaha, Nebraska); Starling-Ohio Medical College
(Columbus); George Washington University (D. C.).

2The American Medical Asiociation Bulletin, vol. iii., no. 5, p. 262.

* At a medical convention recently held, a professor in an institution on the basis of a "high school
education or its equivalent," made this point in a speech, as against the medical department of
a university, which requires for entrance college work: TTie lower-grade institution made "doctors," it
was averred; the higher made only " scientists." Now it chances that for the last two years both sets
of students have submitted to a practical examination in subjects like urinalysis, which assuredly it
behooves the "doctor" as well as the "scientist" to master. At these examinations the "doctors"
show an average of 59 percent; the "scientists," 77 per cent. On the combined written and practical
examinations this year, the "doctors" in question averaged 65.2 per cent, the "scientists" averaged
83.1 percent.

PROPER BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 23

research,1 between which it is necessary to establish a modus Vivendi. But that pro-
blem has nothing to do with the point now under discussion, — viz., as to how much
education or intelligence it requires to establish a reasonable presumption of fitness
to undertake the study of medicine under present conditions.

Taking, then, modern medicine as an attempt to fight the battle against disease
most advantageously to the patient, what shall we require of those who propose to
enlist in the service? To get a somewhat surer perspective in dealing with a ques-
tion around which huge clouds of dust have been beaten up, let us for a moment
look elsewhere. A college education is not in these days a very severe or serious dis- -4 —
cipline. It is compounded in varying proportions of work and play; it scatters I
whatever effort it requires, so that at no point need the student stand the strain of
prolonged intensive exertion. Further, the relation of college education to specific
professional or vocational competency is still under dispute. It is clear, then, that a
college education is less difficult, less trying, less responsible, than a professional edu-
cation in medicine. It is therefore worth remarking that the lowest terms upon which
a college education is now regularly accessible are an actual four-year high school
training, scholastically determined, whether by examination of the candidate or by
appraisement of the school.

Technical schools of engineering and the mechanic arts afford perhaps an even
more illuminating comparison. These institutions began, like the college, at a low
level; but they did not long rest there. Their instruction was too heavily handicapped
by ignorance and immaturity. To their graduates, tasks involving human life and
welfare were committed : the building of bridges, the installation of power plants,
the construction of sewage systems. The technical school was thus driven to seek stu-
dents of greater maturity, of more thorough preliminary schooling, and strictly to
confine its opportunities to them. Now it is noteworthy that, though in point of in-
tensive strain the discipline of the modern engineer equals the discipline of the mod-
ern physician, in one important respect, at least, it is less complex and exacting.
The engineer deals mainly with measurable factors. His factor of uncertainty is within
fairly narrow limits. The reasoning of the medical student is much more complicated.
He handles at one and the same time elements belonging to vastly different cate-
gories : physical, biological, psychological elements are involved in each other. More-
over, the recent graduate in engineering is not at once exposed to a decisive respon-
sibility ; to that he rises slowly through a lengthy series of subordinate positions that
search out and complete his education.2 Between the young graduate in medicine
and his ultimate responsibility — human life — nothing interposes. He cannot now-
adays begin with easy tasks under the surveillance of a superior; the issues of life

1 See page 55.

2 It is interesting to observe the tendency towards conferring only a bachelor's degree in engineering
at graduation instead of the degree of C.E., etc. The bachelor in engineering usually goes to work
at laborer's wages ; he is years reaching the degree of responsibility with which the graduate in med-
icine usually begins.

24 MEDICAL EDUCATION

and death are all in the day's work for him from the very first. The training of the
doctor is therefore more complex and more directly momentous than that of the
technician. Be rt noted, then, that the minimum basis upon which a good school of
engineering to-day accepts students is, once more, an actual high school education,
and that the movement towards elongating the technical course to five years con-
fesses the urgent need of something more.

There is another aspect of the problem equally significant. The curriculum of the
up-to-date technical school is heavily weighted, to be sure; but except for mathema-
tics, the essential subjects with which it starts are separate sciences that presuppose
no prior mastery of contributory sciences. Take at random the College of Engi-
neering of the University of Wisconsin. In the first year the science work is chem-
istry, and though the course is difficult, it demands no preceding acquaintance with
chemistry itself or with any other science; second-year physics is in the same case,
and the mechanics of the second semester looks back no further than to the physics
of the first.

Very different is the plight of the medical school. There the earliest topics of the
curriculum proper — anatomy, physiology, physiological chemistry — already hark
back to a previous scientific discipline. Every one of them involves already acquired
knowledge and manipulative skill. They are laboratory sciences at the second, not
the primary, stage. Consider, for example, anatomy, the simplest and most funda-
mental of them all. It used to begin and end with the dissection of the adult cada-
ver. It can neither begin nor end there to-day ; for it must provide the basis upon
which experimental physiology, pathology, and bacteriology may intelligently be built
up. Mere dissection does not accomplish this; in addition to gross anatomy, the stu-
dent must make out under the microscope the normal cellular structure of organ,
muscle, nerve, and blood-vessel; he must grasp the whole process of structural de-
velopment. Histology and embryology are thus essential aspects of anatomical study.
No treatment of the subject including these is possible within the time-limits of the
modern medical curriculum unless previous training in general biology has equipped
the student with the necessary fundamental conceptions, knowledge, and technical
dexterity. It has just been stated that physiology presupposes anatomy on lines involv-
ing antecedent training in biology; it leans just as hard on chemistry and physics.
The functional activities of the body propound questions in applied chemistry and
applied physics. Nutrition and waste — what are these but chemical problems within
the realm of biology? The mechanism of circulation, of seeing, or hearing — what
are these but physical problems under the same qualifications? The normal rhythm
of physiological function must then remain a riddle to students who cannot think
and speak in biological, chemical, and physical language.

All this is, however, only preliminary. The physician's concern with normal pro-
cess is not disinterested curiosity; it is the starting-point of his effort to comprehend
and to master the abnormal. Pathology and bacteriology are the sciences concerned

PROPER BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 25

with abnormalities of structure and function and their causation. Now the agents and
forces which invade the body to its disadvantage play their game, too, according to
law. And to learn that law one goes once more to the same fundamental sciences
upon which the anatomist and the physiologist have already freely drawn, — viz., bi-
ology, physics, and chemistry.

Nor do these apparently recondite matters concern only the experimenting investi-
gator, eager to convert patiently acquired knowledge of bacterial and other foes into
a rational system of defense against them. For the practical outcome of such investiga-
tion is not communicable by rote; it cannot be reduced to prescriptions for mechan-
ical use by the unenlightened practitioner. Modern medicine cannot be formulated
in quiz-compends; those who would employ it must trouble to understand it. More-
over, medicine is developing with beneficent rapidity along these same biological
and chemical lines. Is our fresh young graduate of five and twenty to keep abreast
of its progress? If so, he must, once more, understand; not otherwise can he adopt
the new agents and new methods issuing at intervals from each of a dozen fertile
laboratories; for rote has no future: it stops where it is. "There can be no doubt,"
said Huxley, "that the future of pathology and of therapeutics, and therefore of
practical medicine, depends upon the extent to which those who occupy themselves
with these subjects are trained in the methods and impregnated with the funda-
mental truths of biology."1 Now the medical sciences proper — anatomy, physiology,
pathology, pharmacology — already crowd the two years of the curriculum that can
be assigned to them ; and in so doing, take for granted the more fundamental sci-
ences— biology, physics, and chemistry — for which there is thus no adequate op-
portunity within the medical school proper. Only at the sacrifice of some essential
part of the medical curriculum — and for every such sacrifice the future patients pay
— can this curriculum be made to include the preliminary subjects upon which it
presumes.

From the foregoing discussion, these conclusions emerge: By the very nature of
the case, admission to a really modern medical school must at the very least depend
on a competent knowledge of chemistry, biology,2 and physics. Every departure from
this basis is at the expense of medical training itself. From the exclusive standpoint
of the medical school it is immaterial where the student gets the instruction. But it
is clear that if it is to become the common minimum basis of medical education, some
recognized and organized manner of obtaining it must be devised : it cannot be left
to the initiative of the individual without greatly impairing its quality. Regular pro-
vision must therefore be made at a definite moment of normal educational progress.
Now the requirement above agreed on is too extensive and too difficult to be incor-
porated in its entirety within the high school or to be substituted for a considerable

1 Quoted by F. T. Lewis in " The Preparation for the Study of Medicine," Popular Science Monthly,
vol. Ixxv., no. 1, p. 66.

2 Including botany.

26 MEDICAL EDUCATION

portion of the usual high school course ; besides, it demands greater maturity than
the secondary school student can be credited with except towards the close of his
high school career. The possibility of mastering the three sciences outside of school
may be dismissed without argument. In the college or technical school alone can the
work be regularly, efficiently, and surely arranged for. The requirement is therefore
necessarily a college requirement, covering two years, because three laboratory courses
cannot be carried through in a briefer period, — a fortunate circumstance, since it
favors the student's simultaneous development along other and more general lines.
It appears, then, that a policy that at the outset was considered from the narrow
standpoint of the medical school alone shortly involves the abandonment of this
point of view in favor of something more comprehensive. The preliminary require-
ment for entrance upon medical education must therefore be formulated in terms
that establish a distinct relation, pedagogical and chronological, between the medi-
cal school and other educational agencies. Nothing will do more to steady and to
improve the college itself than its assumption of such definite functions in respect
to professional and other forms of special training.

So far we have spoken explicitly of the fundamental sciences only. They furnish,
indeed, the essential instrumental basis of medical education. But the instrumental
minimum can hardly serve as the permanent professional minimum. It is even in-
strumentally inadequate. The practitioner deals with facts of two categories. Chem-
istry, physics, biology enable him to apprehend one set; he needs a different ap-
perceptive and appreciative apparatus to deal with other, more subtle elements.
Specific preparation is in this direction much more difficult; one must rely for the
requisite insight and sympathy on a varied and enlarging cultural experience. Such
enlargement of the physician's horizon is otherwise important, for scientific progress
has greatly modified his ethical responsibility. His relation was formerly to his pa-
tient— at most to his patient's family; and it was almost altogether remedial. The
patient had something the matter with him; the doctor was called in to cure it. Pay-
ment of a fee ended the transaction. But the physician's function is fast becoming
social and preventive, rather than individual and curative. Upon him society relies
to ascertain, and through measures essentially educational to enforce, the conditions
that prevent disease and make positively for physical and moral well-being. It goes
without saying that this type of doctor is first of all an educated man.

How nearly our present resources — educational and economic — permit us to ap-
proach the standards above defined is at bottom a question' of fact to be investigated
presently. We have concluded that a two-year college training, in which the sciences
are "featured," is the minimum basis upon which modern medicine can be success-
fully taught. If the requisite number of physicians cannot at one point or another
be procured at that level, a temporary readjustment may be required; but such an
expedient is to be regarded as a makeshift that asks of the sick a sacrifice that must
not be required of them a moment longer than is necessary. Before accepting such

PROPER BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 27

a measure, however, it is exceedingly important not to confuse the basis on which
society can actually get the number of doctors that it needs with the basis on
which our present number of medical schools can keep going. Much depends upon
which end we start from.

CHAPTER III

THE ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION

TAKING a two-year college course, largely constituted of the sciences, as the normal
point of departure, let us now survey the existing status. The one hundred and fifty-
five medical schools of the United States and Canada fall readily into three divisions:
the first includes those that require two or more years of college work for entrance;
the second, those that demand actual graduation from a four-year high school or
oscillate about its supposed "equivalent;" the third, those that ask little or nothing
more than the rudiments or the recollection of a common school education.

To the first division sixteen institutions already belong;1 six more, now demand-
ing one year of college work, will fully enter the division in the fall of 1910 by re-
quiring a second;8 and several more, at this date still in the second division, will
shortly take the step from the high school to the two-year college requirement.3
The Johns Hopkins requires for entrance a college degree which, whatever else it
represents, must include the three fundamental sciences, French, and German. No
exception has ever been made to this degree requirement ; but recently admission to
the second-year class has been granted to students holding an A.B. degree earned
by four years' study, the last of them devoted to medical subjects in institutions
where those subjects were excellently taught.4 At Harvard the degree requirement
has been somewhat unsettled by a recent decision to admit students without degree,
provided they have had two years of college science ; they are to be grouped as " spe-

1 Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Western Reserve, Rush (University of Chicago), Cornell, Stanford, Wake
Forest (N. C.), Yale, and the state universities of California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin,
Michigan (exclusive of the homeopathic department), Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota.

2 Universities of Indiana, Iowa (exclusive of the homeopathic department), Missouri, Pennsylvania,
Utah, Syracuse. Several institutions ask one year of college work, without as yet definite announce-
ment as to requirement of the second, e.g., Virginia, Fordham, Northwestern, North Carolina. In
general, the one-year college requirement is hard to distinguish from the high school requirement,
for if conditions are allowed, — and they always are, — it adds but little to the better type of high school
education. Northwestern has had two years experience under the one-year college requirement, but
has not yet really enforced it. The University of North Carolina was to require a year of college work,
1909-10, but students were admitted on the strength of their unsupported statements " as having had
a college year. . . . Practically, this means that the entrance requirements were not enforced."

'Columbia, Dartmouth, Colorado.

4 Practically, this amounts to a recognition of the A.B. degree won after three years of study, — a
movement deserving encouragement rather than criticism, as matters now stand. In fact, the Johns
Hopkins degree was originally conferred at the close of three years of study, but the academic ma-
triculation requirement was considerably higher than in institutions granting the A.B. degree after
four years of study. Recently the academic matriculation has been lowered and the A.B. course
lengthened to four years. In consequence, the action of the medical department above described in-
volves unwittingly a curious discrimination against the Johns Hopkins A.B. degree, for this degree
now requires four years and may not include medical subjects. To get the Johns Hopkins M.D., a
student has two roads open to him : he may work four years for the Johns Hopkins A.B. and four
more for its M.D., — eight in all; or, starting at exactly the same point, he may get his A.B. in four
years at an institution that includes in its A.B. the first year in medicine, then enter the Johns Hop-
kins medical school and get its M.D. in three years, — that is, seven years in all. A B.S. degree earned
in three years, followed by the M.D. earned in four, gives the same result, — a preference, once more,
that operates against the Johns Hopkins A.B.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 29

cial" students, and are required to maintain higher standing in order to qualify for
the M.D. degree. But as these students enter on a general rule and as a matter of
course, and are, under a slight handicap, eligible to the M.D. degree, they are not
accurately described as special. A special student is properly one whom no rule fits,
one whose admission presents certain individual features requiring consideration on
their merits. Such is not the case with the students under discussion : they enter just
as regularly as the degree men, and without that limitation as to number which
makes of the "special student" device something of a privilege. Harvard can thus
admit any student who is eligible to the schools with the two-year college require-
ment.1 The other institutions under discussion telescope the college and medical
courses: the preliminary medical sciences constitute the bulk of two college years;1
the next two years are reckoned twice. They count simultaneously as third and fourth 1
years of the college and as first and second years of the medical course. At their I
close the student gets the A.B. degree, but his medical education is already half
over. Without exception, the schools belonging to this group are high-grade institu-
tions. They differ considerably, however, in the degree of rigor with which their
elevated entrance requirements have been enforced from the start. At the University
of Pennsylvania, for example, in a class of 114, admitted this year (1909-10) on a one-
year college basis, 75 (66 per cent) are conditioned; at Ann Arbor, of 36 entering on
the two-year college basis, only 8 are conditioned at all, and those mainly in organic
chemistry; at Yale, which advanced in 1909-10 from the high school to the two-year
college basis, in a class of 23, there was only one partial condition in biology, and,
best of all, failed members of last year's class on the old basis were refused re-admis-
sion. Experience elsewhere indicates that the percentage of conditions declines
rapidly as students learn by forethought to adjust their work to their ultimate pur-
pose, and as the colleges facilitate adjustment by providing the requisite opportuni-
ties: both of which processes will be accelerated, if the medical schools have the
courage — and the financial strength — to close their doors to students who labor
under anything more than a slight handicap. Here as elsewhere development follows
hard upon actual responsibility.

Our second division constitutes the real problem; out of it additional high-grade
medical schools to the number actually required must be developed. About fifty insti-
tutions, whose entrance standard approximates high school graduation, belong here.
Great diversity exists in the quality of the student body of these institutions : the
regents' certificates in New York, state board supervision in Michigan, the control
of admission to their medical departments by the academic authorities of McGill

1 The rule just described went into effect 1909-10 ; two students took advantage of it in a class of 62.
In 1908 there were 254 students with degrees, 23 without.

2 Cornell, Western Reserve, and Stanford combine academic and college courses to the extent of
one year only. The pedagogical aspect of the combined course is discussed pp. 73, 74.

SO MEDICAL EDUCATION

and Toronto, insure as capable and homogeneous an enrolment as is obtainable at
or about the high school level. A few others, not so well protected, are within mea-
surable distance of the same category, — the medical department of Tulane Univer-
sity and Jefferson Medical College (Philadelphia), for example. In general, however,
the schools of this division are difficult to classify;1 for they freely admit students
on bases that are not only hopelessly unequal to each other, but are even incapable
of reduction to a common denominator. On their actual standards the catalogue
statements throw little light: there the requirements are cast in the form of a de-
scending scale, running from the top, down. Equally acceptable in their sight are a
bachelor's degree from a college or a university, a diploma from an "accredited"
high school, an examination in a few specified and several of a wide range of op-
tional studies, and a certificate from the principal of a high school, normal school,
or academy, from a "reputable instructor," from a state or city superintendent of
education, or from a state board of medical examiners, that stamps the applicant
as possessing the "equivalent" of a high school education. Now it is clear that the
alternatives at the top are mainly decorative. The real standard is perilously close
to the "equivalent" that creeps in modestly at the bottom. There is, of course,
no active prejudice anywhere against Ph.D.'s and A.M.'s and A.B.'s and B.Sc.'s;
they are apt to be rather conspicuously exploited, when they drift in. But they do
not set the pace; they do not determine or even vitally affect the character of the
school. In these instances the medical curriculum either contains the pre-medical
subjects in an elementary form, or, what may be worse, tries to go ahead entirely
without them. The real standard is not influenced by the presence of degree men,
and the wonder is that any of them sacrifice the advantage of a superior education by
resorting to these institutions. The minimum is, then, the real standard; all else is
permissive; for to the needs of those admitted at the bottom the quantity and quality
of the instruction must in fairness conform.

To get at the real admission standard, then, of these medical schools, one must
make straight for the "equivalent." On the methods of ascertaining and enforcing
that, the issue hangs. Now the "equivalent" may be defined as a device that con-
cedes the necessity of a standard which it forthwith proceeds to evade. The pro-
fessed high school basis is variously sacrificed to this so-called "equivalent." The
medical schools under discussion agree to accept at face value only graduation di-
plomas2 from "approved" or "accredited" high schools. These terms have a definite
meaning: they indicate schools which, upon proper investigation, have been recog-
nized by the state universities of their respective states, or by some other competent
educational organization, — in New England, by the College Entrance Certificate
Board; in the middle west, by the North Central Association. High schools and acad-
emies not acceptable at full value to state universities or to the bodies just named

*In Part II each school is separately characterized.

2 As a matter of fact, nongraduates are also admitted on certificates — a violation of standard, of course.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 31

do not belong to the "approved" or "accredited" class: their diplomas and certifi-
cates are not, therefore, entitled to be received in satisfaction of the announced
standard. They are nevertheless freely accepted. At Tufts, for example, the first year
class (1909-10) numbers 151, of whom only little more than half submit creden-
tials that actually comply with the standard; of the others, 30 are accepted from
non-accredited schools on the strength of diplomas and certificates entitled to no
weight on the professed standard of the Tufts Medical School.1 This is a common
occurrence. It is defended on the ground that " we know the schools." That is, how-
ever, quite impossible. The wisdom of Solomon would not suffice to determine the
actual value of credentials so heterogeneous in origin and content. Universities deal-
ing with far less various material organize registration and inspection bureaus for
their protection and enlightenment. But not infrequently the medical departments
of these very institutions, pretending to stand on the same basis as the academic de-
partment, refrain from seeking the aid of the university registration office. The me-
dical department of Bowdoin is on the college campus, yet its authorities accept cer-
tificates that the college would refuse; the medical departments of Vanderbilt, Tufts,
George Washington University, Creighton (Omaha), Northwestern, the Universities
of Vermont and Pennsylvania,2 are in easy reach of intelligent advice which they
do not systematically utilize. In striking contrast, the medical department of the
University of Texas at Galveston refers all credentials to the registration office of
the university at Austin, the action of which is final.

If the standard were enforced, the candidates in question, not offering a gradua-
tion diploma from an accredited high school, would be compelled to enter by written
examination. But the examination is, as things stand, only another method of eva-
sion. Neither in extent nor in difficulty do the written examinations, in the rela-
tively rare cases in which they are given, even approximate the high school stan-
dard. Nor are they meant to do so. Colleges with medical departments of the kind
under discussion do not expect academic and medical students to pass the same or
the same kind of examination: a special set of questions is prepared for the medical
candidates, including perhaps half the subjects, and each of these traversing about half
the ground covered by the academic papers. At Tufts, the medical matriculate attempts
six papers, representing, all told, less than two years of high school work ; and he is
accepted on condition if he passes three.3 Papers of similar quality are put forward at
Boston University ; those at Bowdoin are more extensive and more difficult, though
still below the supposedly equal academic standard. The written examinations held
under the authority of the state boards in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Missouri,* are of

1 Those still remaining are commented on below.

2 The academic authorities here pass on the college year.

s Of the class above mentioned 38 were admitted by examination.

4 A St. Louis cramming establishment, conducted by the wife of a teacher in a local medical school,
offers to prepare in a single year, according to the Missouri standard, a boy who has never had any

82 MEDICAL EDUCATION

the same insufficient character. In Michigan they fairly well approximate high school
value, — in consequence of which they are decidedly unpopular.1 In Illinois the writ-
ten examination has been transformed into an informal after-dinner conversation
between candidate and examiner, as we shall presently discover.

There remains still a third method of cutting below an actual high school stan-
dard,— the method indeed that provides much the most capacious loophole for the
admission of unqualified students under the cloak of nominal compliance with the
high school standard. The agent in the transactions about to be described is the
medical examiner, appointed in some places by voluntary agreement between
the schools, elsewhere delegated by the state board,2 or by the superintendent of
public instruction acting in its behalf, for the purpose of dealing with students who
present written evidence other than the diploma of an accredited high school. It is
intended and expected that this official shall enforce a high school standard. In
few states is this standard achieved. The education department in New York, the
state boards in Minnesota and Michigan, maintain what may be fairly called a scho-
lastically honest high school requirement; for they require a diploma represent-
ing an organically complete secondary school education, properly guaranteed, or, in
default thereof, a written examination covering about the same ground : there is no
other recourse.

Elsewhere the state board is legally powerless, as in Maryland, or unwilling to an-
tagonize the schools, as in Illinois and Kentucky. The outside examiners, agreed on
by the schools in the former case, designated by law in the latter, fall far short of
enforcing a high school standard. The examiner, even where distinctly well inten-
tioned, as in Kentucky, never gets sufficient control. The schools do not want the
rule enforced, and the boards are either not strong enough or not conscientious enough
to withstand them. Besides, the examiners lack time, machinery, and encouragement
for the proper performance of their ostensible office. They are busy men : here, a
county official; there, a school principal; elsewhere, a high school professor.3 A single
individual, after his regular day's work is over, without assistance of any kind, is
thus expected to perform a task much more complicated than that for which Harvard,
Columbia, and the University of Michigan maintain costly establishments. There is

high school training at all. It is pointed out that by matriculating at once the student may escape
any subsequent advance in entrance requirements.

1 In Ohio the examinations are fairly representative of high school values, as far as they go. But up to
this time they have not covered a complete high school course and they have little influence on enrol-
ment, as tutor-certificates are freely accepted in their stead.

*In these cases, the requirement is really a practice, not an educational regulation. But the effect is
the same.

•Occasionally the school has an "arrangement" by which defective candidates are referred to a
"coach," who is simultaneously "examiner ;" he thus approves his own work. This is the practice of
the George Washington University medical department. Again, the school refers defective candi-
dates to the preparatory department of its own university, and shortly after admits them on an as-
surance of the "equivalent from that source. This is the Creighton school (Omaha) plan ; out of 56
members of its first-year class (1908-9), 23 were admitted on certificates (not diplomas) of this kind.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 33

no set time when candidates must appear. They drop in as they please, separately:
now, before the medical school opens, again, long after ; sometimes with their creden-
tials, sometimes without them. There is no definite procedure. At times, the examiner
concludes from the face of the papers; at times from the face of the candidate. The
whole business is transacted in a free and easy way. In Illinois, for example, the law
speaks of "preliminary" educational requirements; the state board graciously permits
them to become subsequents. Students enter the medical schools, embark on the study
of medicine, and at their convenience "square up"1 with one of the examiners. An
evening call is arranged ; there is an informal talk, aiming to elicit what "subjects"
the candidate "has had." He may, after an interview lasting from thirty minutes to
two hours, and rarely including any writing, be "passed" with or without "condi-
tions;" if with conditions, the rule requires him to reappear for a second "exam-
ination" before the beginning of the sophomore year; but nothing happens if he
postpones his reappearance until a short time before graduation.2 Besides, a condi-
tion in one subject may be removed by "passing" in another! "No technical ques-
tions are asked; the presumption is that the applicant won't remember details."
Formerly, written examinations were used in part ; but they were given up " because
almost everybody failed." And it may at any moment happen that an applicant actu-
ally turned down by one examiner will be passed by another. The most flagrantly
commercial of the Chicago schools3 operate "pre-medical" classes, where a hasty
cram, usually at night, suffices to meet the academic requirements of the Illinois
state board: "the examiner's no prude, he'll give a man a chance," said the dean of
one of them.

In Pennsylvania there was until quite lately no high school requirement by law;
but recent legislation fixes the high school or its equivalent, on which the better
schools had previously agreed, as the legal minimum. Its value has hitherto varied.
In the first place, the examiners have accepted three-year high school graduates:
"They come every day and are not turned down." In the second place, the alterna-
tives in the matter of studies are so many that he must indeed have had narrow op-

1 Quotation marks indicate throughout words taken down on the spot in the course of interviews
with officials.

2 New York, while dealing strictly with applicants for practice who have been educated in New York
state, deals somewhat more leniently with the outsider. The New York law provides that to be "re-
gistered as maintaining a proper medical standard, "a school must, among other things, "require that
before beginning the course for the degree, all matriculates afford evidence of a general preliminary
education equivalent to at least a four-year high school course," etc. (Handbook 9, April, 1908, p. 45.)
As a matter of fact, a student who received his degree from a school on the accredited or registered
list (ibid., pp. 48-70) may, on applying for registration in New York, find his preliminary education
to have been below the New York standard. In certain circumstances, he may be allowed to make
good his defects, provided they are of limited scope. He is thus bringing his "preliminary " education
up to standard, after he has received his M.D. degree. This is a concession that the New York Edu-
cation Department makes to the loose educational administration of other states. It is to be hoped
that after due notice given it may be discontinued. The offending schools may very properly be ex-
cluded from the list.

3 Bennett Medical College, Illinois Medical College, Jenner Medical College, Chicago Night Univer-
sity, Reliance Medical College.

34 MEDICAL EDUCATION

portunities who cannot piece together scraps enough to gain conditional admission.
"The more subjects, the more points," one dean is quoted as saying. Partial certifi-
cates— a year's work taken here, a subject or part of a subject taken there — may be
added up until the sum equals arithmetically the "units" of a high school course.
Moreover, the same subject can be counted twice: English grammar and rhetoric are
two subjects, not one; so are English literature and English classics; so biology and
zoology. Now, aside from these duplications, it is absurd to sum up fragmentary or
isolated "credits" of this kind as "equivalent" to a high school course, even if the
details were each adequately tested, as they are not. For a school curriculum is an
organic thing in whose continuity and interrelations its educational virtue resides.
One subject bears upon another; one year reinforces another. A curriculum has, as
such, unity, purpose, method. It is not merely a question of time, still less of de-
tached specified amounts without reference to time.1

Things are not essentially different in Baltimore, where the entire matter is regu-
lated by voluntary action on the part of the three schools belonging to the division
under consideration. The "examination" is of the usual kind: "on a strict account-
ing they would all fail." In Louisville, students are admitted into the local school,
the medical department of the University of Louisville, by either examination or
certificate. The examination covers less than a four-year high school course; certifi-
cates are accepted from two-year high schools as full satisfaction of the requirements.
Worse still, the school also admits students without either, in flat disregard of its
professed standard and of the state board. St. Louis, Denver, Nashville, Pittsburgh,
furnish further illustration. In none of these does the examiner exact, whether
through examination or in evaluation of certificates, the preliminary standard which
he is ostensibly appointed to enforce. In most cases the very word "preliminary" is
a misnomer, just as we have found it to be in Illinois. For example, the Ohio re-
quirement is not really preliminary to medical education. The schools on the so-called
high school or equivalent basis admit students who have not completely satisfied the
examiner. Strictly speaking, these students should not be allowed to proceed to the
sophomore class; for their medical school credits beyond the first year cannot count
until after the admission requirements have been satisfied. Meanwhile they may
have reached the senior class. And the moment they satisfy the examiner in re-
spect to "preliminaries," now "subsequents" to the extent of two or three years, that
moment their previous work in the medical school automatically becomes "good."
At Vanderbilt the first-year class had been studying two months, — yet not a single
"preliminary" credential had been even submitted to the examiner; at Louisville

1 It is useless to review all the states separately, for the differences are not very significant. Ohio,
however, may be instanced as a state in transit towards the Michigan standard. At present, the ex-
aminer accepts as equivalent to graduation from an approved high school several alternatives, none
of which is really equivalent: (1) whole years taken in different institutions, provided they sum up
four; (2) certificates from "known instructors," testifying that candidates have "made up" condi-
tions,— no fixed periods of study being required in such cases; (3) examinations, covering hitherto
less than the high school course.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 35

work begins November 15, but students have until January 8 before even calling on
that functionary. Even Michigan wavers here: for March 1, 1910, had come around
before all the first-year students of the Detroit School of Medicine had satisfied
the state board. In such cases the requirement may be preliminary to graduation,
or to practice, or to what-not; it is absurd to regard it as preliminary to medical
education. For the whole purpose of a preliminary is to guarantee a certain degree
of training, maturity, and knowledge before the student crosses the threshold of the
medical school, on the ground that he is not fit to cross the threshold without it;
and this purpose is abandoned if he is allowed to enter without it and subsequently,
by hook or crook, in hastily snatched moments, to go through the form of a perfunc-
tory compliance that becomes complete some time before he comes up for his M.D.
degree. There is no retroactive virtue in such a feat. Educational futility can go no
farther. A high school "preliminary requirement,11 scrappily accumulated as a side
issue incidental to attendance in the medical school, is worse than nothing to the
extent that it has interfered with undivided attention to medical study.1

To all the disorder that prevails in schools of this grade in the United States,
the Canadian schools at the same level present, with two exceptions,2 a forcible
contrast. There, too, "equivalents" are accepted; but they are equivalents in fact
as in name, for they are probed by a series of written examinations, each three
hours in length, held at a stated time and place, only and actually in advance of
the opening of the medical school, entrance to which is absolutely dependent on
their outcome.

The quality of the student body thus accumulated in the schools under discussion
bears out the above description. "The facilities are better than the students;" "the
boys are imbued with the idea of being doctors ; they want to cut and prescribe ; all
else is theoretical;" students accepted in chemistry or physics "don't know a baro-
meter when they see it ;" "it is difficult to get a student to want to repeat an experi-
ment (in physiology). They have neither curiosity nor capacity." "The machinery
does n't stop the unfit." " Men get in, not because the country needs the doctors, but
because the schools need the money.1" " What is your honest opinion of your own
enrolment?" a professor in a Philadelphia school was asked. "Well, the most I would
claim," he answered, "is that nobody who is absolutely worthless gets in"!

1 Some state boards are already in possession of the legal right to enforce a preliminary requirement.
The Illinois law, for example, says : "The State Board of Health shall be empowered to establish a
standard of preliminary education deemed requisite to admission to a medical college in good stand-
ing" (par. 6 b, ch. 91, Kurd's Revised Statutes, 1908). The board is apparently free to refuse ex-
amination to any applicant whose completed entrance certificate does not bear date four years
prior to his M.D. diploma. The present policy of the Illinois board thus squarely contravenes the
obvious intention or the statute. Contrast with this lax procedure the Scotch requirement: "The
student must within fifteen days of the commencement of study, obtain registration." (Regulations
for the Triple Qualification, ch. i. § 2.)

8 Laval University, Montreal, which admits students below grade ; but they must come to the United
States to practise, for they have no standing in Canada ; and Western University, London, Ont.,
which leaves the entire question to the discretion of the student, who, it is supposed, will conform
to the local requirement of the place in which he expects to settle.

86 MEDICAL EDUCATION

We have still to deal with schools of our third division. They are most numerous
in the south, but they exist in almost all medical "centers," — San Francisco, Chicago,
— there plainly on the sufferance of the state board, for the law, if enforced, would
stamp them out, — St. Louis and Baltimore. Outside the south they usually make
some pretense of requiring the "equivalent" of a high school education; but no ex-
aminer of any kind is employed, and the deans are extremely reluctant to be pinned
down. Southern schools of this division, after specifying an impressive series of ac-
ceptable credentials ranging once more from university degrees downward, announce
their satisfaction with a "grammar school followed by two years of a high school,"
or in default thereof a general assurance of adequate "scholastic attainments" by a
state, city, or county superintendent, or some other person connected with education
or purporting to be such ; but the lack of such credentials is not very serious, for
the student is admitted without them, with leave to procure them later. Many of
the schools accept students from the grammar schools. Credentials, if presented, are
casually regarded and then usually returned ; a few may be found, rolled up in a
rubber band, in a dusty pigeonhole. There is no protection against fraud or forgery.
At the College of Medicine and Surgery, Chicago, a thorough search for credentials
or some record of them was made by the secretary and several members of the fac-
ulty, through desk drawers, safe, etc., but without avail. The school is nevertheless
in "good standing " with the Illinois state board, and is "accredited" by the New York
Education Department to the extent of three years' work. At the medical department
of the University of Georgia I was told : " We go a long way on faith." In visits to med-
ical colleges certificates were found from non-existent schools as well as from non-exis-
tent places.1 Of course a few fairly competent students may be found sprinkled in these
institutions. But for the most part, the student body gets in on the "equivalent."
At the Atlanta School of Medicine, 73 per cent of last year's first-year class entered
thus; at the Mississippi Medical College (Meridian, Mississippi), 80 per cent; at Bir-
mingham Medical College, 62 per cent. In point of quality, the classes are not com-
petent to use such opportunities as are provided. In Atlanta the Grady Hospital is open
for bedside clinics to groups of six students; on the average, two come. In Chattanooga
it is "rare to get a medical student who knows even a little algebra; it is impossible
to use with medical students the text-books in science used in freshman academic
classes." At Charlotte I was told that "it is idle to talk of real laboratory work for

1 Accepted certificates are in this form :

To Dean :

Sir : I have examined Mr , of , and find his scholastic attainments equal

to those requisite for a first-grade teacher's certificate in our public schools, with the equivalent of two years
of high school study.

Yours very truly.

(Siffn here) Superintendent of Public Inttruction.

These are furnished to the student by the medical college ; he needs only to have them signed. The
college does not investigate the signature ; no official mark or seal is asked. Even the medical de-
partment of Vanderbilt accepts preliminary certificates in this form.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 37

students so ignorant and clumsy. Many of them, gotten through advertising, would
make better farmers. There's no use in having apparatus for experimental physio-
logy— the men couldn't use it; they're all thumbs."

Statistical proof of inadequacy of preparation is furnished by what one may fairly
call the abnormal mortality within schools operating on the basis of "equivalents."
The standards of promotion in these schools watch narrowly the action of the
state boards, which are usually lenient. The schools are too weak financially to do
otherwise; doubtful points are resolved in the boy's favor.1 Hence the school exam-
inations play less havoc than would follow tests strictly constructed in the public
interest. Yet the mortality from one cause or another by the close of the first year
runs from 20 to 50 per cent. At the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia an
initial first-year enrolment of 152 in October fell to 1002 by the following January
first; of these, 60 passed without conditions, much less than one-half the original
class enrolment; at Tufts the entering class 1908—9 shows in the catalogue an enrol-
ment of 141 ; 75 were promoted, with or without conditions, into the sophomore
class;3 at Cornell, on its former high school basis, the failures at the close of the first
year in a period often years averaged 28 per cent; at Buffalo, the failed and condi-
tioned of three successive first-year classes amounted to 40 per cent of the total en-
rolment; at Vanderbilt, out of a class of 70, the dropped, conditioned, and failed
amounted to 44 per cent; at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Atlanta, 70 per
cent, out of a class of 99. In schools on the higher basis, i.e., two years of college
work or better, the instruction is more elaborate, the work more difficult, and the
examinations harder; for scientific ideals rather than chances with the state board
dominate. Yet the mortality drops decisively. At the Johns Hopkins, the mortality
during three successive years averages less than 5 per cent, only half of which is due
to failure; at Ann Arbor, on the one-year college basis, the mortality is below 10 per
cent. The exhibit made by institutions that have tried both standards is especially
instructive. At the University of Missouri, during the last three years of the high
school or equivalent basis, there was a mortality due to actual failure of 35 per cent;
during the following three years, when one year of college work was required, the
mortality fell to 12£ percent. At the medical department of the University of Minne-
sota, during the last three years of the high school requirement, the mortality was

1The dean of one school admitted that he carried "men easily from class to class, but plucked them
in the last year," — an excellent thing for the school : it collects three years' fees and still avoids a low
record in the state board examinations.

2 Some dropped out because unable to qualify, a few for lack of funds, others because of inability to
do the work ; but the enormous number that drop or fail throws a strong light on the miscellaneous
character of the enrolment obtained on the "equivalent" basis.

3 It is relatively immaterial to our argument what became of the other 66 ; they represent fatalities
for most of which low standards are to blame. As a matter of fact they are thus accounted for : 14
were dropped students (not catalogued with their class on account of conditions); 20 failed of pro-
motion ; 17 took all or a portion of first-year examinations 1908-9, but did not return 1909-10 ; 15 left
before the final examinations.

88 MEDICAL EDUCATION

18 per cent;1 in the three years following, on the basis of one year of college work,
the mortality was about 10 per cent. At the University of Virginia, in the last two
years on the old basis, 38 per cent of the students failed in one or more subjects; an
increase in entrance requirements by one college year reduces the fatalities to 14
per cent, despite the augmented difficulty of the work. The medical department of
the University of Texas has gradually advanced from a two-year high school basis
to a four-year high school basis; on the lower standard there were 34 per cent of
hopeless failures in 1903, as against 13 per cent of hopeless failures in 1908, on the
higher. The requirement of a college year assists doubly, — first, in eliminating the
sham equivalents; next, in strengthening the equipment of those who actually persist.
Canada accomplishes the former by means of the examinations already noticed, with
the result that the mortality there is distinctly less than ours, at something like the
same ostensible level.2

The breaches made by the fatalities above described are repaired by immigration,
which on investigation proves to be in most instances only another way of evading
standards, — entrance and other. To some extent, good students who find themselves
in a poor school endeavor to retrieve their error by transferring themselves to a
better ; again, there is a certain amount of enforced emigration annually from schools
that, like the University of Wisconsin, offer medical instruction in the first two
years only. In the main, however, the " lame ducks" move, and, strangely enough,
into schools that are at the moment engaged in rejecting a number equally lame.
The interchange is veiled by pretended examinations; but the character of the
examination can be guessed from the quality of the students that pass it. Two
standards are thus often broken at once : An ill equipped student registers in a low-
grade Chicago school. At the close of a year or two, he transfers to the College of
Physicians and Surgeons, which might have declined him originally. He has thus cir-
cumvented its admission requirements. If, now, he has previously failed in the medical
coursessofarpursued,and succeeds "on examination" in passing, he has simultaneously
circumvented the professional requirements as well. Instances of both kinds abound
in schools at and below the high school basis. In 1908-9 the Medico-Chirurgical
College of Philadelphia accepted failures from the Jefferson Medical College and

1 This relatively low mortality is to be ascribed to the fact that the student body, though on the high
school basis, contained no "equivalents."

1 A tabular statement will perhaps help to bring these facts home. Three institutions on the high basis
(Johns Hopkins, Harvard, University of Minnesota) show :

Total enrolment Dropped before examinations Failed and conditioned Patted without condition!
757 2 per cent 17 per cent 81 per cent

Seven of the strongest schools in the United States on the high school or equivalent basis (Jefferson
Medical, New York University, University of Maryland, Medieo-Chirurgical, Tufts, Yale, and Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania (the last two before elevating their standard) show :

2390 11 per cent 38 per cent £1 per cent

McGill and Toronto show :

945 5 per cent 28 per cent 67 per'cent

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 39

the University of Pennsylvania and advanced them to the classes to which they had
been denied promotion by the teachers who knew them best; at the same time
the Jefferson Medical College1 itself accepted and in the same way advanced failures
from New York University and the University of Pennsylvania; Tufts admits as
"specials" students failed at Dartmouth, Queen's (Kingston, Ontario), and the
Medico-Chirurgical of Philadelphia; the medical department of the University of
Illinois (College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago) fairly abounds in rejected
students from other schools, and in emigrated students from the low-grade insti-
tutions of Chicago and elsewhere; of the same character is a large part of the en-
rolment of the medical department of Valparaiso University. Failures from Ann
Arbor are regarded as worthy of advancement by Northwestern (Chicago). The Physi-
cians and Surgeons of Baltimore gives time and subject credit — after "examination,"
of course — to failures turned out of the University of Buffalo, New York University,
the University of Pennsylvania, the Jefferson Medical College, and Yale; the Uni-
versity of Maryland is equally indiscriminate, advancing to the classes which they
had failed to reach students from most of the same institutions and some from the
local College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Baltimore Medical College, besides.
Other Jefferson Medical failures, not to be found in the two Baltimore schools just
named, should be looked for in the Baltimore Medical College, together with failures
from Tufts, Long Island Hospital Medical College, etc. The upper classes of two
Baltimore schools — the Maryland Medical College and the Atlantic Medical Col-
lege— are largely recruited by emigration from other schools;2 the latter of these had
(1908-9) a senior class of 31, a freshman class of 1, — and every member of the senior
class had been admitted to advanced standing from some other school.3

Is this the best that can be done? Will the actual enforcement of a real and ade-
quate standard starve any section of the country in the matter of physicians?

The question can be answered without guesswork or speculation. The south re-
quires something like 400 doctors annually.4 How high a standard can it enforce, and
still get them? In the year 1908—9 there were 15,791 male students in four-year high
schools in six southern states,6 — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Vir-

1 This institution, like others, admits to advanced standing a considerable number of students from
schools whose entrance requirements are much below its own ; e.g., in the session above referred to,
there were several students from the medical department of Fort Worth University, whose entrance
requirement is nominal ; from the University or Oregon, College of Physicians and Surgeons, San
Francisco, Keokuk, Denver and Gross. At the same time, it deals severely with its own student
body, for it refuses promotion annually to a large number, who emigrate chiefly to Baltimore.

2 Mississippi Medical College, Meridian, was similarly recruited.

3 Among other schools guilty of advancing students to whom promotion had been refused by their
own schools may be mentioned : College of Physicians and Surgeons, Atlanta, Georgetown Univer-
sity (Washington, D. CA Denver and Gross, University of Colorado, George Washington Univer-
sity, Milwaukee Medical College.

4 The former secretary of the Southern Medical College Association calculated that 300 would suffice.

5 For these figures we are indebted to a painstaking census conducted by the secondary school in-
spectors maintained in these states by the General Education Board.

40 MEDICAL EDUCATION

ginia and Texas; there were in the previous year 5877 male students in the academic
departments of the southern state universities, and 1653 more in endowed institu-
tions of similar grade;1 a population of over 23,0002 bordering on high school gradua-
tion and widely distributed over the entire area. Our question is thus already an-
swered. The best material for the making of a few hundred southern doctors annually
does not have to be torn from the plough.

But these figures convey by no means the whole truth. The south is in the midst
of a genuine educational renaissance. Within the last few years every southern state
under the leadership of the state university, the state department of education, and
certain endowed institutions like Vanderbilt University, has set enthusiastically to
work to develop its common and secondary school systems after the admirable model
furnished by the robust communities of the middle west. The professors of secondary
education in the state universities are the evangelists of this auspicious movement.
Young, intelligent, well trained, these sturdy leaders ceaselessly traverse the length
and breadth of their respective states, stimulating, suggesting, guiding, organizing.
It is an inspiring spectacle. Three years ago the high school had no legal standing
in Virginia; to-day the state is dotted with two-year, three-year, and four-year high
schools, created by local taxation, with a considerable subvention from the state
treasury. There are already 2511 boys in fairly well equipped four-year high schools,
and as many more in private institutions of equal value; and the two-year and three-
year schools are growing rapidly into fuller high school stature. It needs no argument
to prove that Virginia can at once procure its doctors from among the bvna-jide gra-
duates of such high schools and better. What is true of Virginia is tine of every other
southern state. In Alabama, for example, three years ago there was scarcely a pub-
lic high school in the state ; to-day there are 61 public four-year high schools,3 1 1 pri-
vate four-year high schools, and 15 town and city three-year high schools. Of the
345 teachers employed in these schools, 184 are college graduates and 55 more have
had at least two years of college work. Of course the situation is uneven; it lacks
homogeneity. Standards are more or less confused; distinctions are not everywhere
clear. The schools have frequently shot up like ungainly boys, who first get their
height and fill up afterwards; their four years are not yet the four years of Boston
or Indianapolis. But this is a phenomenon of hopeful omen ; it provides the frame-
work for a vigorous and imminent maturity. The universitiesand the professional schools
have in this emergency a clear duty : to call things by their right names, to abandon
the apologetic attitude, to cease from compromises which tempt the student from the
high school and then set up the successful temptation as a sufficient excuse for their

1 Compiled from the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1908.

* Not including four-year high schools of Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas,
and Kentucky, which would considerably increase these figures. They are omitted because equally
reliable data are not at hand.

* Under legislative enactment approved August 7, 1907, the state contributes $2000 a year to aid any
county that establishes its own nigh school

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 41

own folly in so doing. Let them reinforce the high school by the opposite policy;
they will soon perceive the needlessness of the exceptions which they still suggest,
and often even require. How much longer will the southern people, generously spend-
ing themselves in the effort to create high school systems, continue to handicap their
development by allowing medical education legally to rest on an ante-bellum ba^s?

The duty of the southern universities at this juncture is clear. They are equally
bound to assist the development of the secondary school and to furnish the southern
people an improved type of physician. They do both if, while actually enforcing the
standard above advocated, they provide the best medical training obtainable at that
level. As a matter of fact, a highly useful doctor can be trained on the high school
basis if his defects, frankly admitted, are made the occasion for more, instead of less,
efficient instruction. The weak southern schools apologize for their wretchedness by
alleging the shortcomings of the student body. But the shortcomings of the students
are a call for better, rather than an excuse for worse, teaching. On the whole, a south-
ern university will for a time probably do best to put its strength unreservedly
into the improved instruction of a larger body of students at the high school level,
rather than to train a smaller body on a somewhat higher basis. What with the other
influences working to discredit the proprietary medical school, if Tulane, Vanderbilt,
and Texas furnish actual high school graduates with an education as good as that
of Toronto or of McGill, they will soon get control of the field, they will educate
the southern public to look to them for their physicians, and they will induce the
state legislatures to support a position undeniably reasonable, so that when they at
last make the upward move, there will be no low-grade medical schools to profit by
the step and to make it a pretext for the continuance of commercialism in medical
education.1 »

The state of Texas has taken a sound and yet conservative position. Beginning
with 1909, it has decreed a gradual annual rise of standard that will shortly re-
sult in making its four-year high school the legal basis of medical education. Cau-
tious elevation thus avoids all danger of breaking with the state school system. The
statute is not free from defects, for it provides for the acceptance, at their face value,
of the medical student certificates of reciprocating states; but the Texas state board,
having dealt vigorously with the worst of the Texas schools, will in all probability
make effective use of the power in its hands. Other southern states must inevitably
follow. It is of course important that they should not move faster than their edu-
cational facilities; but it is equally important that they should not move any more
slowly. Thus far, Texas alone has made an effort to keep pace.

The situation is even clearer, in so far as it touches the rest of the country. We
estimate2 that outside the south 1500 doctors annually graduated will provide for

1 For more detailed consideration on this point, the reader is referred to the discussions in Part II of
the various southern states.

2 In chapter a.

42 MEDICAL EDUCATION

all the real and many imaginary needs. There are at this date something like 8000
public and over 1000 private high schools, so widely dispersed over the area under
consideration that on the average few boys need go over five miles to school.1 In
the public high schools alone there are enrolled 300,000 boys.8 What excuse exists
for cutting under the high school? We can indeed do better than to accept as the
basis of a medical education the high school "flat." In the colleges, universities, and
technical schools of the north and west, exclusive of preparatory and professional
departments, there were in 1908, 120,000s male students. The number swells with
unprecedented rapidity ; long before the country has digested the number of doctors
now struggling for a livelihood, it will have doubled. Already in 1907, 903 of the
doctors graduated in that year held academic degrees; that is to say, fully one-half
of the number the country actually needed could conform to the standard that has
been urged, or better. There is at this moment absolutely nothing in the educational
situation outside the south that countenances the least departure from the scientific
basis necessary to the successful pursuit of modern medicine.

For whose sake is it permitted? Not really for the remote mountain districts of
the south, for example, whence the "yarb doctor,"" unschooled and unlicensed, can in
no event be dislodged; nor yet for that twilight zone, on the hither edge of which
so many low-grade doctors huddle that there is no decent living for those already
there and no tempting prospect for anybody better: ostensibly, "for the poor boy."
For his sake, the terms of entrance upon a medical career must be kept low and easy.
We have no right, it is urged, to set up standards which will close the profession to
"poor boys."

What are the merits of this contention ? The medical profession is a social organ,
created not for the purpose of gratifying the inclinations or preferences of certain
individuals, but as a means of promoting health, physical vigor, happiness — and
the economic independence and efficiency immediately connected with these factors.
Whether most men support themselves or become charges on the community depends
on their keeping well, or if ill, promptly getting welL Now, can anyone seriously
contend that in the midst of abundant educational resources, a congenial or profit-
able career in medicine is to be made for an individual regardless of his capacity
to satisfy the purpose for which the profession exists? It is right to sympathize with
those who lack only opportunity; still better to assist them in surmounting obsta-
cles; but not at the price of certain injury to the common weal. Commiseration for
the hand-spinner was not suffered for one moment to defeat the general economic
advantage procurable through machine-made cloth. Yet the hand-spinner had a sort
of vested right: society had tacitly induced him to enter the trade; he had grown
up in it on that assurance; and he was now good for nothing else. Your "poor boy"

1 Wilgus, Legal Education in the United States, p. 29.

1 There are 33,000 more in the preparatory departments of colleges and universities.

•We are indebted for these statistics to the United States Commissioner of Education.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 43

has no right, natural, indefeasible, or acquired, to enter upon the practice of medi-
cine unless it is best for society that he should.

As a matter of fact, the attainments required by our entire argument are not, as
a rule, beyond the reach of the earnest poor boy. He need only take thought in good
season, lay his plans, be prudent, and stick to his purpose. Without these qualities,
medicine is no calling for him ; with them, poverty will rarely block his way. Besides,
if poverty is to be a factor in determining entrance standards, just where does pov-
erty cease to excuse ignorance? Apparently the inexcusable degree of ignorance be-
gins just where the ability to pay fees leaves off. For the schools that maintain
"equivalents'1 for the sake of the "poor boy" are not cheap, and the student who
can pay his expenses in them can also pay for something better, and pay his fees the
student must; for it is precisely the proprietary and independent schools, avowedly
solicitous for the "poor boy," that do the least for him by way of scholarship or other
exemption.1 They exact a complete settlement in cash or notes. Thus a four-year
medical education in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Chicago schools, on the "equiva-
lent" basis, costs a boy in tuition fees and board about $1420. The same student can
go to Ann Arbor, get there two years of college work in the pre-medical sciences and
modern languages, and four years in medicine, besides, for an expenditure of SI 466,
covering the same items. Thus six years at Ann Arbor are not appreciably more ex-
pensive than four years in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Chicago. Or, if a large city be
preferred, he can get his two years in the admirable pre-medical laboratories of the
University of Minnesota, at Minneapolis, followed by his four-year medical work
there, for very little more. Low entrance requirements flourish, then, for the benefit of
the poor school, not of the poor boy. Meanwhile, opportunities exist, in a measure
during the school year, still more during vacation, to earn part, perhaps all, of the
required sum.2 Doubtless in the near future, the problem will be still further simpli-
fied in the interest of the better training by increased scholarship and other endow-
ments, as in Germany. Meanwhile, it is dubious educational philanthropy to interrupt
a poor boy's struggle upwards by inviting him into a medical school where there are
excessively large chances of failure, escaping which he is at once exposed to a disad-
vantageous competition with men better trained by far.

So much from the standpoint of the individual. The proper method of calculating
cost is, however, social. Society defrays the expense of training and maintaining the
medical corps. In the long run which imposes the greater burden on the community, —

1 Three scholarships, amounting to tuition fees for one year, are, however, annually awarded at the
University of Maryland.

2 It is stated that at the University of Chicago "the opportunities for taking work are more numer-
ous than the number of students desiring to take advantage of them. . . . There is ample opportunity
for the energetic student to earn his way, either in whole or in part, and opportunities usually out-
number those seeking them. " School Review, January, 1910 (Notes and News). It must, of course, be
remembered that only the vigorous and talented can afford to undertake the study of medicine under
such conditions. The others are barred just as effectively from the low-grade as from the high-grade
school. Students are found "working their way through" at the medical departments of Harvard,
Michigan, Toronto, McGill, etc.

44 MEDICAL EDUCATION

the training of a needlessly vast body of inferior men, a large proportion of whom break
down, or that of a smaller body of competent men who actually achieve their purpose?
When to the direct waste here in question there is added the indirect loss due to in-
competency, it is clear that the more expensive type is decidedly the cheaper. Aside
from interest on investment, from loss by withdrawal of the student body from produc-
tive occupations, the cost of our present system of medical education is annually about
83,000,000, as paid in tuition fees alone. The number of high-grade physicians really
required could be educated for much less; the others would be profitably employed
elsewhere; and society would be still further enriched by efficient medical service.

The argument is apt to shift at this point. If we refuse to be moved by the "poor
boy," pity the small towns; for it is speciously argued that the well trained, college-
bred student will scorn them. Not sympathy for the poor boy requires us now to
sacrifice the small town to him, but sympathy for the small town requires us to sac-
rifice the poor boy to it. Two vital considerations are overlooked in this plea. In the
first place, the small town needs the best and not the worst doctor procurable. For
* the country doctor has only himself to rely on : he cannot in every pinch hail spe-
cialist, expert, and nurse. On his own skill, knowledge, resourcefulness, the welfare
of his patient altogether depends. The rural district is therefore entitled to the best
trained physician that can be induced to go there. But, we are told, the well trained
man will not go; he will not pay for a high-grade medical education and then con-
tent himself with a modest return on his investment. Now the six-year medical edu-
cation (that based on two college years) and the four-year medical education (that
based on the high school or equivalent) may, as we saw above, be made to cost the
same sum. As far as cost is concerned, then, the better sort of four-year medical edu-
cation mifct have precisely the same effect on distribution of doctors as the six-year
training furnished by the state universities. If a Jefferson graduate is not deterred
by the cost of his education from seeking a livelihood in the country, the Ann Arbor
or Minnesota man will not be deterred, either. But a deeper question may be raised.
What is the financial inducement that persuades men scientifically inclined to do
what they really like ? — for a man who does not like medicine has no business in it.
How far does the investment point of view actually control? Complete and reliable
data are at hand. The college professor has procured for himself an even more elaborate
and expensive training than has here been advocated for the prospective physician.
Did he require the assurance of large dividends on his investment? "The full professor
in the one hundred institutions in the United States and Canada which are financially
strongest receives on the average an annual compensation of approximately $2500." *
But the scholar does not usually advance beyond the assistant professorship : what fig-
ure has financial reward cut with him ? "At the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven, after
seven years of collegiate and graduate study, involving not only considerable outlay,

1 " The Financial Status of the Professor in America and in Germany." Carntgit Foundation for th«
Adtanrement of Teaching, Bulletin II., p. vi.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 45

but also the important item of the foregoing of earning during this period, he is the
proud possessor of his Ph. D. and is ready to enter his profession. The next five years
he spends as instructor. In his thirty-second year he reaches assistant professorship.
He is now in his thirty-seventh year, having been an assistant professor for five years.
His average salary for the ten years has been $1325. ... At thirty-seven he is mar-
ried, has one child, and a salary of $1800." * In Germany "the road to a professor-
ship involves a period of training and of self-denial far longer and more exacting
than that to which the American professor submits;"3 in France "there are no pe-
cuniary prizes whatever in their calling for even those who attain its highest posts."3
What is even more to the point, — the posts of instructor and assistant in small col-
leges situated in out-of-the-way places can be readily filled at slender salaries with
expensively trained men. Of course there are compensations. But the point is that a
large financial inducement is not indispensable, provided a man is doing what he
likes. In most sections the country doctor has better worldly prospects. The fact
stands out that it is not income but taste that primarily attracts men into scholarly
or professional life. That granted, the prospect of a modest income does not effectually
deter ; and not infrequently the charm of living away from large cities may even
attract.

Our limited experience with physicians trained at a high level sustains this view.
We have thus far produced relatively few college-bred physicians; large cities have
bid high for them, without, however, bagging all. Johns Hopkins graduates in med-
icine, to take the highest quality the country has produced, are already scattered
through thirty-two states and territories. As if to prove that money is not the sole
deciding consideration^ dozen have gone as missionaries to the Orient and several into
the army and navy. In this country there is a Johns Hopkins man practising at Clay-
ton, Alabama, with 1000 inhabitants; at Fort Egbert, Alaska, with 458; at Gorham,
Colorado, with 364; at Chattahoochee, Florida, with 460; at Fort Bayard, New Mex-
ico, with 724; at Sonyea, New York, with 300; at Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania,
with 50; at Wells River, Vermont, with 660; at Fairfax, Virginia, with 200; at Fort
Casey, Washington, with 300; at Kimball, West Virginia, with 2000; at Mazomanie,
Wisconsin, with 900. They have scattered to the four winds, and inevitably.4 No
single influence controls : home, money, taste, opportunity, all figure. When we have
produced as large a number of well trained doctors as Germany, they will be found
in our villages, just as one finds them over there. Minnesota, closed after 1912 to all
low-grade graduates, Kansas and North and South Dakota, agricultural states, Con-

1 Statistics from twenty leading universities, discussed by Guido H. Marx in address. The Problem of
the Assistant Professor, before Association of American Universities, January, 1910.

2 Carnegie Foundation, Bulletin II., p. vii.

3 Bodley : France, voL i. p. 54.

4 Western Reserve men (three years of college required for entrance) are to be found in Cochranton,
Pennsylvania (population, 724); Solon Springs, Wisconsin (population, 400); Kinsman, Ohio (popula-
tion, 824) ; Rawson, Ohio (population, 552).

46 MEDICAL EDUCATION

necticut, Indiana, Colorado, look forward confidently to the high standard basis. Is
there any reason founded in consideration for public welfare which holds back Illinois,
New York, Pennsylvania, from similar action?

There is, however, still another standpoint from which the question under discus-
sion ought to be viewed. We have been endeavoring to combat the argument in
favor of admittedly inferior schools dependent on fees on the ground that in the
east, north, and west, these schools have already outlived their usefulness; that, even
in the south, the need, greatly exaggerated, will gradually disappear. Let us, how-
ever, for the moment concede that the south, and perhaps other parts of the country,
still require some medical schools operating on the high school basis, or a little less.
Does it follow that the proprietary or independent unendowed medical school has
thereby established its place? By no means. It is precisely the inferior medical stu-
dent who requires the superior medical school. His responsibilities are going to be
as heavy as those of his better trained fellow practitioner : to be equally trustworthy,
his instruction must be better, not worse. The less he brings to the school, the more
the school must do for him. The necessity of recruiting the medical school with high
school boys is therefore the final argument in favor of fewer schools, with better
equipment, conducted by skilful professional teachers.

The truth is that existing conditions are defended only by way of keeping un-
necessary medical schools alive. The change to a higher standard could be fatal to
many of them without in the least threatening social needs. Momentarily there would
be a sharp shrinkage. But forethought would be thus effectively stimulated; trained
men would be attracted into the field; readjustment would be complete long before
any community felt the pinch.1 Despite prevailing confusion — legal, popular, and
educational — as to what good training in medicine demands, the enrolment in the
five schools which have during the last four years required two or more years of college
work is already 1186 students, and is increasing rapidly.2 When the Johns Hopkins
plans were under discussion in the middle seventies, Dr. John S. Billings, the adviser
of the trustees in things medical, suggested that the graduating class be limited to
twenty-five. " I think it will be many years before the number of twenty-five for
the graduating class can be reached," he said.8 The school opened in 1893; the first
class, graduated in 1897, numbered 15; the third, graduated in 1899, numbered 32: so
promptly did the country respond. Institutions that have switched from the high

1 It has been calculated that in the supply of doctors the country is now "about thirty-five years in
advance of the requirements"! Benedict : Journal of American Medical Auociation, vol. lii., no. 5,
pp. 378, 379.

1 In the sixteen schools on the two-year college basis there were (1908-9) 1850 students who had en-
tered at that level. The total enrolment in these sixteen institutions was much greater, because the
upper classes in several had entered on a lower basis. These figures are far from the total number of
college men in medical schools. The pity is that they are scattered through institutions in which they
lose the advantage which their education should give them.

* Medical Education: Extract! from Lecture* before the Johnt Hopkins Univertity, 1877-8, p. 22 (Balti-
more, 1878).

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 47

school to the college standard after due notice given1 have thus far lost only one-
half or less of their former enrolment. The only thing that falls in proportion is the
income from fees ; the percentage of graduates is reduced much less. At the Univer-
sity of Minnesota, there used to be an average first-year attendance of 80 on the
high school basis; on the two-year college basis it is now 40; at Harvard on the
former basis, 160 new matriculants; now, on a college basis, 79. Western Reserve,
with 34 on the high school basis, advanced suddenly in 1901 to a three-year college
requirement; the enrolment fell to 12, but by 1908 the loss was practically recovered.
Most significant is the demonstration that the greatest loss is due to the transition
from the high school or equivalent to the one-year college basis ; the rise from one
to two years of college has relatively little effect on enrolment. It would appear that
the college requirement compels deliberation. Once decided, the student is not seri-
ously hampered by the effort or the expense of an additional year.

It does not follow, however, that if schools generally rose to the college require-
ment, their losses would be only one-half and the recovery therefrom ultimately as-
sured. For the schools that came off thus lightly were previously attended by a large
proportion of high-grade men.2 A much greater loss would undoubtedly take place
in the lower-grade schools; many of them would be practically annihilated. For the
tendency of elevated standards and ideals is to reduce the number of students to
something like parity with the demand, and to concentrate this reduced student body
in fewer institutions, adequately supported.

The basis which we have urged for medical education gives an undoubted advan-
tage to the university medical departments. We shall see in subsequent chapters
that other equally important factors are at work tending to restore medical educa-
tion to the university status ; but for the moment the difficulty of procuring anywhere
else the necessary educational foundation is perhaps most cogent. A countermove,
by way of avoiding this tendency, has recently emanated from certain Philadelphia
schools,8 in the form of a suggested five-year course, the first year to be devoted to
the pre-medical sciences.

Several serious objections to this proposition may be urged: (1) a single year is
insufficient for three laboratory sciences, and makes no provision for modern lan-
guages; the very best medical schools could with difficulty give one year's pre-medi-

1 Cornell changed from the high school to the three-year college requirement with less than a year's
notice. There was, of course, no chance to readjust matters; the next first-year class (1908) num-
bered 15 ; in 1909, this increased to 23.

2 In these schools standards were elevated in advance of the operation of the formal declaration to
that effect. For example, Columbia (College of Physicians ana Surgeons, New York) goes to the
two-year college basis 1910-11 ; but the entering class 1909-10 contained among its 86 matriculates
48 students with degrees, and 1 1 more who had had two years of college work.

3 These schools have no endowments ; and the pre-medical sciences cannot be properly taught out of
fees, as will become evident in chapter viii., "The Financial Aspects of Medical Education. "Hence the
work must be mainly make-believe. It would have to be given by already overburdened science
teachers or, still worse, by practitioners. The Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia offers these
courses "in conjunction with classes in the sister department of pharmacy. "This is absurd.

48

cal work, — they cannot possibly give two; as for anything more liberal, there is no
chance at all. Hence the step would shortly prove an obstruction to further progress.
(2) Unquestionably, the day is coming when the medical school proper will want a
fifth or hospital year, — a culmination that will be indefinitely postponed if the year
in question is prefixed to the course and assigned to preliminary training. (3) Finally,
the arrangement protracts our present educational disorganization. It proposes that
the medical school should do the work of the college, just as it is either doing — or
doing without — the work of the high school. Now the strength of an educational
system is wholly a question of the competent performance of differentiated function
by each of its organic parts. Our tardily awakened educational conscience and in-
telligence find themselves confronted with several independent and detached educa-
tional agencies, — high schools, colleges, professional schools. Obviously, they are
not indifferent to each other; they belong in a definite order and relation. We now
know perfectly well what that order, what that relation, is. And the solidity of our
educational and scientific progress depends on our success in making it prevail.
To no inconsiderable extent, inefficiency has been due to irresponsibility resulting
from just this lack of organized relationships; and the cure for evils due to lack
of responsibility is not less responsibility, but more; not less differentiation, but more.
The reconstruction of our medical education on the basis of two years of required
college work is not, however, going to end matters once and for all. It leaves un-
touched certain outlying problems that will all the more surely come into focus when
the professional training of the physician is once securely established on a scientific
basis. At that moment the social role of the physician will generally expand, and to
support such expansion, he will crave a more liberal and disinterested educational
experience. The question of age — not thus far important because hitherto our demands
have been well within the limits of adolescence — will then require to be reckoned
with. The college freshman averages nineteen years of age ; two years of college work
permit him to begin the study of medicine at twenty-one, to be graduated at twenty-
five, to get a hospital year and begin practice at twenty-six or twenty-seven. No one
familiar with the American college can lightly ask that this age be raised two years
for everybody, for the sake of the additional results to be secured from non-profes-
sional college work. There is, however, little question that compression in the ele-
mentary school, closer articulation between and more effective instruction within
secondary school and college, can effect economies that will give the youth of twenty-
one the advantage of a complete college education. The basis of medical education
will thus have been broadened without deferring the actual start. Meanwhile we are
so far from endeavoring to force a single iron-clad standard on the entire country
that our proposition explicitly recognizes at least three concurrent levels for the
time being: (1) the state university entrance standard in the south, (2) the two-year
college basis as legal minimum in the rest of the country, (3) the degree standard
in a small number of institutions.

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 49

The practical problem remains. How is the existing situation to be handled? The
higher standard is alike necessary and feasible. How long is it to be postponed be-
cause it threatens the existence of this school or of that? In general, our medical
schools, like our colleges, are local institutions; their students come mainly from
their own vicinity. The ratio of physicians to population in a given state is there-
fore a fair indication of the number of medical schools needed. Where physicians are
superabundant, and high schools and colleges at least not lacking, the medical
schools cannot effectively plead for mercy on the ground that elevated standards
will be their death. New York has two schools on the two-year college basis or bet-
ter; nine others rest on a lower basis. They would improve if they could "afford
it."1 But with one doctor for every 600 people in the state, with accessible high schools,
with cheap — and in New York City, at least, free — colleges, it is absolutely immate-
rial to the public whether they can afford it or not. The public interest demands the
change. We may therefore at once assume (what everybody grants) that the problem
is insoluble on the basis of the survival of all or most of our present medical schools.
To live, they must get students ; they must get them far in excess of the number
they will graduate; they must graduate them far in excess of the number of
doctors needed. They will therefore require their clientele of ill prepared, discon-
tented, drifting boys, accessible to successful solicitation on commercial lines. In-
evitably, then, the way to better medical education lies through fewer medical \
schools ; but legal enactments on the subject of medical education and practice will
be required before the medical schools will either give up or relate themselves soundly
to the educational resources of their respective states. No general legislation is at the
moment feasible. The south, for instance, may well rest for a time, if every state will
at once restrict examinations for license to candidates actually possessing the M.D.
degree, and require after, say, January 1, 1911, that every such degree shall ema-
nate from a medical school whose entrance standards are at least those of the state
university. Such legislation would suppress the schools that now demoralize the situ-
ation; it would concentrate the better students in a few solvent institutions to which
the next moves may safely be left. Elsewhere, every available agency should be em-
ployed to bring examining boards to reinterpret the word "equivalent" and to adopt
efficient machinery for the enforcement of the intended standard. Equivalent means
"equal in force, quality, and effect." The only authorities competent to pass on such
values are trained experts. The entire matter would be in their hands if the state boards
should in every state delegate the function of evaluating entrance credentials to a
competently organized institution of learning. In many states, the state university

1The dean of a superfluous southern medical school writes : "Our faculty gets only what's left after
all expenses are paid, and that averages $400 per session of seven months. This we will cheerfully
forego, and teach gratis, if only a class, or endowment, will pay cost of running the college. We will
advance to the highest requirements just as soon as the conditions will admit, and are ready now to
open next session under highest requirements if the wherewith to pay expenses is in sight" Ob-
serve that there is small consideration here for the "poor boy" or the "back country;" it is simply
a question of college survival.

50 MEDICAL EDUCATION

could very properly perform this duty ; elsewhere, an equally satisfactory arrangement
could be made with an endowed institution. Whatever the standard fixed, it would
thus be intelligently enforced. The school catalogues would then announce that no
student can be matriculated whose credentials are not filed within ten days of the
opening of the session, and that no M. D. degree can be conferred until at least four
years subsequent to complete satisfaction of the preliminary requirement. These cre-
dentials, sent at once to the secretary of the state board, would be by him turned
over to the registrar of the state or other university, whose verdict would be final.
A state that desired to enforce a four-year high school requirement could specify as
satisfying its requirements:

(1) Certificate of admission to a state university requiring a four-year high school
education ;

(2) Certificate of admission to any institution that is a member of the Association
of American Universities;

(3) Medical Student Certificate of the Regents of the University of the State of
New York;

(4) Certificates issued by the College Entrance Examination Board for 14- units.
In exchange for such credentials, or for high school diplomas acceptable to the

academic authorities acting for the state board, a medical student certificate would
be issued; in default thereof, the student must by examination earn one of the afore-
said credentials, in its turn to be made the basis of his medical student certificate.
In the southern states, the legal minimum would be necessarily below the four-year
high school; in Minnesota, above it. But the same sort of machinery would work.
The schools would have nothing to do with it except to keep systematically regis-
tered the name of the student and the number of his certificate; the state board or
the university acting for it would keep everything else, open to inspection.

This is substantially what takes place in New York, where the State Education De-
partment superintends the process. What is wanted in other states is an agency
similarly qualified. For the present nothing can so well perform the office within a
given state as its state university, or, in default thereof, the best of its endowed in-
stitutions. This suggestion is perfectly fair to all medical schools, for the credentials
would pass through the hands of the state board to the reviewing authority without
information as to the purpose of the applicant. The directions required would take
up less space in the medical school catalogues than the complicated details they now
contain. It should be further provided that the original credentials of every student
be kept on file in the office of the state board or the reviewing university, and that
they shall be open to inspection, without notice, by properly accredited representa-
tives of medical and educational organizations. These simple measures would intro-
duce intelligence and sincerity where subterfuge and disorder now prevail. The bene-
ficial results to the high school and the medical school would be incalculable. Nor
would the poor boy be subjected to the least hardship; for by exercising forethought,

ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 51

he could accumulate genuine scholastic credits by examination or otherwise, pari
passu, during the time he is accumulating the money for his medical education. So
much actually accomplished, the rest will be easier. The reduced number of schools
will not resist the forces making for a higher legal minimum. The state universities
of the west will doubtless lead this movement; for once established on the two-year
college basis, they will induce the states to protect their own sons and the public
health against the lower-grade doctors made elsewhere. The University of Minnesota, j
having by statesmanlike action got rid of all other medical schools in the state, is thus 1
backed up by the legislature and the state board. North Dakota and Indiana have
taken the same stand. Michigan and Iowa will probably soon follow. "The adjust-
ment is perhaps difficult, but not too difficult for American strength."1

1 Adapted from Billroth: Ueber das Lehren und L«rn«n d*r medicinischen Wiuenachaft, quoted by
Lewis, loc. cit.

CHAPTER IV

THE COURSE OF STUDY: THE LABORATORY BRANCHES

(A) FIRST AND SECOND YEARS

THREE characteristic stages are to be discerned in the evolution of medical teaching.1
The first and longest was the era of dogma. Its landmarks are Hippocrates (B.C. 460-
377) and Galen (A. D. 130-200), whose writings were for centuries transmitted as an
authoritative canon. Observation and experience had indeed figured considerably in
their composition,8 but increasingly remote disciples in accepting the tradition lost
all interest in its source. The Galenic system took its place in the medieval univer-
sity with Euclid and Aristotle, — a thing to be pondered, expounded and learned;
facts had no chance if pitted against the word of the master. So completely was
medicine dominated by scholasticism that surgery, employing such base tools as sight
and touch, was held to be something less than a trade and accordingly excluded
from intellectual company.

The second era is that of the empiric. It began with the introduction of anatomy
in the sixteenth century, but did not reach its zenith until some two hundred years
later. At its best it leaned upon experience, but its means of analyzing, classifying^
and interpreting phenomena were painfully limited. Medical art was still under the
sway of preconceived and preternatural principles of explanation ; and rigorous ther-
apeutic measures were not uncommonly deduced from purely metaphysical assump-
tions. The debility of yellow fever, for example, Rush explained by "the oppressed
state of the system;" and on the basis of a gratuitous abstraction, resorted freely to
purging and bleeding. His first four patients recovered; there is no telling how many
lives were subsequently sacrificed to this conclusive demonstration. The fact is that
the empiric lacked a technique with which to distinguish between apparently similar
phenomena, to organize facts, and to check up observation; the art of differentiation
through controlled experimentation was as yet in its infancy. Under vague labels
like rheumatism, biliousness, malaria, or congestion, a hodgepodge of dissimilar and
unrelated conditions were uncritically classed; the names meant nothing, but they
answered as explanation, and even sanctioned severe and nauseous medication. Igno-
rant of causes, the shrewdest empiric thus continued to confound totally unlike
conditions on the basis of superficial symptomatic resemblance; and with amazing
assurance undertook to employ in all a therapeutic procedure of doubtful value in
any. He combined the vehemence of the partisan with something of the credulity of

1 Nothing would do more to orient the student intelligently than a knowledge of the history of
medical science and teaching. It is a great pity that some effort is not made in the better medical
schools to interest the student in the subject. A proper historical perspective would render impos-
sible such opposition to improved medical teaching as is now based on conscientious but mistaken
devotion to outgrown conditions.

*"The correct inductive method was borne in on the triumph of Hippocrates." Compere's Greek
Thinluri (translated by Magnus, vol. i. p. 308).

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 53

a child, persuading too often by ardent insistence rather than by logical proof. His
students were thus passive learners, even where the teaching was demonstrative.
They studied anatomy by watching a teacher dissect; they studied therapeutics by
taking the word of the lecturer or of the text-book for the efficacy of particular
remedies in certain affections.

The third era is dominated by the knowledge that medicine is part and parcel
of modern science. The human body belongs to the animal world. It is put together
of tissues and organs, in their structure, origin, and development not essentially un-
like what the biologist is otherwise familiar with ; it grows, reproduces itself, decays,
according to general laws. It is liable to attack by hostile physical and biological
agencies ; now struck with a weapon, again ravaged by parasites. The normal course
of bodily activity is a matter of observation and experience; the best methods of
combating interference must be learned in much the same way. Gratuitous specu-
lation is at every stage foreign to the scientific attitude of mind.

We may then fairly describe modern medicine as characterized by a severely criti-
cal handling of experience. It is at once more skeptical and more assured than mere
empiricism. For though it takes nothing on faith, the fact which it accepts does not
fear the hottest fire. Scientific medicine is, however, as yet by no means all of one
piece; uniform exactitude is still indefinitely remote; fortunately, scientific integrity
does not depend on the perfect homogeneity of all its data and conclusions. Modern
medicine deals, then, like empiricism, not only with certainties, but also with pro-
babilities, surmises, theories. It differs from empiricism, however, in actually know-
ing at the moment the logical quality of the material which it handles. It knows, as
empiricism never knows, where certainties stop and risks begin. Now it acts confi-
dently, because it has facts; again cautiously, because it merely surmises; then tenta-
tively, because it hardly more than hopes. The empiric and the scientist both theo-
rize, but logically to very different ends. The theories of the empiric set up some
unverifiable existence back of and independent of facts, — a vital essence, for example;
the scientific theory is in the facts, — summing them up economically and suggesting
practical measures by whose outcome it stands or falls. Scientific medicine, therefore,
has its eyes open; it takes its risks consciously; it does not cure defects of knowledge
by partisan heat; it is free of dogmatism and open-armed to demonstration from
whatever quarter.

On the pedagogic side, modern medicine, like all scientific teaching, is character-
ized by activity. The student no longer merely watches, listens, memorizes; he does.
His own activities in the laboratory and in the clinic are the main factors in his in-
struction and discipline. An education in medicine nowadays involves both learning
and learning how; the student cannot effectively know, unless he knows how.

Two circumstances have mediated the transformation from empirical to scientific
medicine: the development of physics, chemistry, and biology; the elaboration out
of them of a method just as applicable to practice as to research. The essential de-

54 MEDICAL EDUCATION

pendence of modern medicine on the physical and biological sciences, already ad-
verted to,1 will hereafter become increasingly obvious in the wealth of the curricula
based upon them, and no less in the poverty of those constructed without them.
But the practical importance of scientific method as such to the general practitioner
is by no means so generally conceded. Its function in investigation is granted : there
it is justified by its own fruits. But what has this to do with the education or the
daily routine of the family doctor?

The question raised is fundamental; the answer decides the sort of medical edu-
cation that we shall seek generally to provide. If, in a word, scientific method and
interest are of slight or no importance to the ordinary practitioner of medicine,8 we
shall permanently establish two types of school, — the scientific type, in which en-
lightened and progressive men may be trained; the routine type, in which "family
doctors'" may be ground out wholesale. If, on the other hand, scientific method is
just as valuable to the practitioner as to the investigator, it may indeed be expe-
dient partly, or even in some instances altogether, to set aside gifted individuals as
teachers or investigators and to guard the undergraduate student against original
work prematurely undertaken. But this will not be construed to involve the abrupt
and total segregation of medical education from medical research. Much of the edu-
cator's duty may consist in traversing a well known path; but if otherwise he is pro-
gressively busy, the well known path will never look exactly the same twice. The
medical school will in that case be more than the undergraduate curriculum. Ac-
tivities will be in progress that at every point run beyond the undergraduate^
capacity and interest at the moment. But the undergraduate curriculum will not
differ in spirit, method, or aspiration from the interests that transcend it.

The conservative in medical education makes much of what he conceives to be a
fundamental opposition between medical practice and medical science; occasionally
a despairing progressive accepts it. The family doctor represents the former type.
One can ask of him — so the conservative thinks — only that he be more or less well
grounded in things as they are when he gets his degree. The momentum with which
he is propelled from the medical school must carry him to the end of his days, — on a
gradually declining curve; but that cannot be helped. The other type — the scien-
tific doctor — either himself "investigates," or has a turn for picking up increases
due to others. How profound is the opposition here depicted ? Opposition of course
there is between all things in respect to time and energy. The doctor who puts on
his hat and goes out to see a sick baby cannot just then be making an autopsy on a
guinea-pig dead of experimental dysentery. But does the opposition go any deeper?
Is there any logical incompatibility between the science and the practice of medi-
cine?

1 Chapter ii. p. 24.

1 This is the common contention of the routine schools that run on low admission requirements and
employ practitioner teachers.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 55

The main intellectual tool of the investigator is the working hypothesis, or theory,
as it is more commonly called. The scientist is confronted by a definite situation; he
observes it for the purpose of taking in all the facts. These suggest to him a line of
action. He constructs a hypothesis, as we say. Upon this he acts, and the practical
outcome of his procedure refutes, confirms, or modifies his theory. Between theory
and fact his mind flies like a shuttle; and theory is helpful and important just to
the degree in which it enables him to understand, relate, and control phenomena.

This is essentially the technique of research: wherein is it irrelevant to bedside
practice? The physician, too, is confronted by a definite situation. He must needs
seize its details, and only powers of observation trained in actual experimentation
will enable him to do so. The patient's history, conditions, symptoms, form his data.
Thereupon he, too, frames his working hypothesis, now called a diagnosis. It sug-
gests a line of action. Is he right or wrong? Has he actually amassed all the signifi-
cant facts? Does his working hypothesis properly put them together? The sick man's
progress is nature's comment and criticism. The professional competency of the
physician is in proportion to his ability to heed the response which nature thus
makes to his ministrations. The progress of science and the scientific or intelligent
practice of medicine employ, therefore, exactly the same technique. To use it, whether
in investigation or in practice, the student must be trained to the positive exercise
of his faculties; and if so trained, the medical school begins rather than completes his
medical education. It cannot in any event transmit to him more than a fraction of
the actual treasures of the science; but it can at least put him in the way of steadily
increasing his holdings. A professional habit definitely formed upon scientific method
will convert every detail of his practising experience into an additional factor in his
effective education.

From the standpoint of the young student, the school is, of course, concerned
chiefly with his acquisition of the proper knowledge, attitude, and technique. Once
more, it matters not at that stage whether his destination is to be investigation or
practice. In either case, as beginner, he learns chiefly what is old, known, understood.
But the old, known, and understood are all alike new to him ; and the teacher in pre-
senting it to his apprehension seeks to evoke the attitude, and to carry him through
the processes, of the thinker and not of the parrot.

The fact that disease is only in part accurately known does not invalidate the
scientific method in practice. In the twilight region probabilities are substituted for
certainties. There the physician may indeed only surmise, but, most important of
all, he knows that he surmises. His procedure is tentative, observant, heedful, re-
sponsive. Meanwhile the logic of the process has not changed. The scientific physician
still keeps his advantage over the empiric. He studies the actual situation with
keener attention; he is freer of prejudiced prepossession; he is more conscious of
liability to error. Whatever the patient may have to endure from a baffling disease,
he is not further handicapped by reckless medication. In the end the scientist alone

56 MEDICAL EDUCATION

draws the line accurately between the known, the partly known, and the unknown.
The empiricist fares forth with an indiscriminate confidence which sharp lines do
not disturb.

Investigation and practice are thus one in spirit, method, and object. What is
apt to be regarded as a logical, is really but a practical, difficulty, due to the neces-
sity for a division of labor. "The golden nuggets at or near the surface of things
have been for the greater part discovered, it seems safe to say. We must dig deeper
to find new ones of equal value, and we must often dig circuitously, with mere hints
for guides."1 If, then, we differentiate investigator and practitioner, it is because
in the former case action is leisurely and indirect, in the latter case, immediate and
anxious. The investigator swings around by a larger loop. But the mental qualities
involved are the same. They employ the same method, the same sort of intelli-
gence. And as they get their method and develop their intelligence in the first
place at school, it follows that the modern medical school will be a productive as
well as a transmitting agency. An exacting discipline cannot be imparted except
in a keen atmosphere by men who are themselves "in training." Of course the busi-
ness of the medical school is the making of doctors; nine-tenths of its graduates will,
as Dr. Osier holds, never be anything else. But practitioners of modern medicine
must be alert, systematic, thorough, critically open-minded; they will get no such
training from perfunctory teachers. Educationally, then, research is required of the
medical faculty because only research will keep the teachers in condition. A non-pro-
ductive school, conceivably up to date to-day, would be out of date to-morrow ; its
dead atmosphere would soon breed a careless and unenlightened dogmatism.

Teachers of modern medicine, clinical as well as scientific, must, then, be men of
active, progressive temper, with definite ideals, exacting habits in thought and
work, and with still some margin for growth. No inconsiderable part of their energy
and time is indeed absorbed in what is after all routine instruction; for their situa-
tion differs vastly from that of workers in non-teaching institutions devoted wholly
to investigation. Their practical success depends, therefore, on their ability to carry
into routine the rigor and the vigor of their research moments. A happy adjust-
ment is in this matter by no means easy ; nor has it been as yet invariably reached.
Investigators, impressed with the practical importance of scientific method to the
practising physician, tend perhaps to believe that it is to be acquired only in origi-
nal research. A certain impatience therefore develops, and ill equipped student barks
venture prematurely into uncharted seas. But the truth is that an instructor, devot-
ing part of his day under adequate protection to investigation, can teach even the
elements of his subject on rigorously scientific lines. On the other hand, it will never
happen that every professor in either the medical school or the university faculty
is a genuinely productive scientist. There is room for men of another type, — the

1 C. A. Herter : " Imagination and Idealism in the Medical Sciences," Columbia Univ. Quart., vol. xii.,
DO. 11, p. 16.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 57

non-productive, assimilative teacher of wide learning, continuous receptivity, critical
sense, and responsive interest. Not infrequently these men, catholic in their sympa-
thies, scholarly in spirit and method, prove the purveyors and distributors through
whom new ideas are harmonized and made current. They preserve balance and make
connections. The one person for whom there is no place in the medical school, the
university, or the college, is precisely he who has hitherto generally usurped the
medical field, — the scientifically dead practitioner, whose knowledge has long since
come to a standstill and whose lectures, composed when he first took his chair, like
pebbles rolling in a brook get smoother and smoother as the stream of time washes
over them.

The student is throughout to be kept on his mettle. He does not have to be a
passive learner, just because it is too early for him to be an original explorer. He
can actively master and securely fix scientific technique and method in the process
of acquiring the already known. From time to time a novel turn may indeed give
zest to routine; but the undergraduate student of medicine will for the most part ac-
quire the methods, standards, and habits of science by working over territory which
has been traversed before, in an atmosphere freshened by the search for truth.

For purposes of convenience, the medical curriculum may be divided into two
parts, according as the work is carried on mainly in laboratories or mainly in the
hospital; but the distinction is only superficial, for the hospital is itself in the full-
est sense a laboratory. In general, the four-year curriculum falls into two fairly equal
sections: the first two years are devoted mainly1 to laboratory sciences, — anatomy,
physiology, pharmacology, pathology; the last two to clinical work in medicine,
surgery, and obstetrics. The former are concerned with the study of normal and
abnormal phenomena as such ; the latter are busy with their practical treatment as
manifested in disease. How far the earlier years should be at all conscious of the
latter is a mooted question. Anatomy and physiology are ultimately biological sci-
ences. Do the professional purposes of the medical school modify the strict biologi-
cal point of view ? Should the teaching of anatomy and physiology be affected by
the fact that these subjects are parts of a medical curriculum ? Or ought they be
presented exactly as they would be presented to students of biology not intending
to be physicians? A layman hesitates to offer an opinion where the doctors disagree,
but the purely pedagogical standpoint may assist a determination of the issue. Per-
haps a certain misconception of what is actually at stake is in a measure responsible
for the issue. Scientific rigor and thoroughness are not in question. Whatever the
point of view — whether purely biological or medical — scientific method is equally
feasible and essential ; a verdict favorable to recognition of the explicitly medical
standpoint would not derogate from scientific rigor. There is no doubt that the
sciences in question can be properly cultivated only in the university in their entirety

*An introductory course in physical diagnosis is given in the second year; occasionally clinical work
is begun in its latter half.

58 MEDICAL EDUCATION

and in close association with contiguous, contributory, or overlapping sciences. No
one of them is sharply demarcated ; at any moment a lucky stroke may transfer a
problem from pathology to chemistry or biology. There are indeed no problems in
pathology which are not simultaneously problems of chemistry and biology as well.
So far the rigorously and disinterestedly scientific viewpoint is valid. These con-
siderations, however, still omit one highly important fact: medical education is a
technical or professional discipline; it calls for the possession of certain portions of
many sciences arranged and organized with a distinct practical purpose in view. That
is what makes it a "profession." Its point of view is not that of any one of the sciences
as such. It is difficult to see how separate acquisitions in several fields can be organi-
cally combined, can be brought to play upon each other, in the realization of a con-
trolling purpose, unless this purpose is consciously present in the selection and mani-
pulation of the material. Pathology, for example, is a study of abnormal structure
and function ; the pathologist as such works intensively within a circumscribed field.
For the time being, it pays him to ignore bearings and complications outside his im-
mediate territory. Undoubtedly, the progressive pathologist will always be at work
upon certain problems, thus temporarily, but only temporarily, isolated. But in the
undergraduate class-room he is from time to time under necessity of escaping these
limitations : there he is engaged in presenting things in their relations. The autopsy,
the clinical history, will be utilized in presenting to the student, even if incidentally,
the total picture of disease. Similarly, the anatomist can score many a point for the
physiologist without actually forestalling him. He views the body not as a mosaic
to be broken up, but as a machine to be taken to pieces, the more perfectly to com-
prehend how it works. The pharmacologist is in a similar relation to the clinician.
The principles of bacteriology lose nothing in scientific exactitude because, taught
as a part of the medical curriculum, they are enforced with illustrations from the bac-
terial diseases of man rather than from those of animals and plants; and histology is not
the less histology because tissues from the human body are preferably employed.1 In

JThe following quotations from "An Outline of the Course in Normal Histology," by L. F. Barker
and C. R. Bardeen (John* Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, vol. vii., nos. 62, 63, p. 100, etc.), forcibly illus-
trate the above contention.

" In deciding as to the plan to Ke adopted we have been much influenced, too, by the fact that our
students are students of medicine. Thus it will be noticed that in the selection of tissues, those from
the human body make up a large part of the material used ; and when animal tissues are employed,
special care has been taken to point out how they differ from the human. Moreover, in deciding what
to exclude from the course thought was given to the bearing of the specimens on the practical work
in medicine which was to follow, and stress was laid upon those portions of human histology which
previous experience has taught us are of the most importance in the appreciation and interpretation
of the pathological alterations in disease. In the present status of pathological histology a knowledge
of certain details is of much greater value than that of others ; and for the student entering medicine,
a judicious selection of what shall be given and what shall be left out should be made by some one
who has had a more or less wide training in pathological histology.

" Further bearing in mind the life-work for which the student is preparing himself, we have not
always chosen the method which would show the finest structural details of the tissues. While the
most delicate methods have been introduced in places, we have endeavored to familiarize the stu-
dents with a large number of different modes of preparation. The student who has been brought up
entirely on 'gilt-edged' histological methods will find himself sadly at a loss in battling with the
•rough and ready ' world in which the pathologist has to live." (Somewhat abridged.)

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 59

short, research, untrammeled by near reference to practical ends, will go on in every
properly organized medical school; its critical method will dominate all teaching
whatsoever ; but undergraduate instruction will be throughout explicitly conscious
of its professional end and aim. In no other way can all the sciences belonging to
the medical curriculum be thoroughly kneaded. An active apperceptive relation must
be established and maintained between laboratory and clinical experience. Such a re-
lation cannot be one-sided; it will not spontaneously set itself up in the last two
years if it is deliberately suppressed in the first two. There is no cement like interest,
no stimulus like the hint of a coming practical application.1

Medical reference, in the sense that the laboratory sciences should, while freely
presented, be kept conscious of their membership in the medical curriculum, has been
discredited in this country, because it had so long meant a mechanical drill in an
inert outline of the several sciences by untrained and busy practitioners. In the ef-
fort to teach the modicum of chemistry or physiology or pathology that "the family
doctor needs to know," they neglected to teach anything of permanent scientific
value at all. A revulsion was inevitable. It was supposed that the harm was due to
the simple fact of medical reference. Such was not really the case. The sciences were
badly taught, not merely because they were made prematurely and excessively con-
scious of medical application, — though such had indeed been the case, — but because
the teachers lacked abundant scientific knowledge and spirit. Had they had these,
the medical reference would neither have dominated nor impoverished their presen-
tation. Our experience then furnishes a conclusive argument against delegating the
teaching function to essentially unscientific practising physicians; it does not recom-
mend the isolation of the laboratory sciences, locally or scientifically, from the clin-
ical work. If it meant that, then institutions like the Johns Hopkins Medical
School, in which laboratories and hospital are compactly organized from the stand-
point of a scientific education in medicine, would labor under a positive disadvantage
as compared with schools that, by reason of their situation, must in the scientific
years forego the bedside and the autopsy altogether. In sober truth, four years are
none too many thoroughly to saturate the student with medical enthusiasm and
to give him the physician's standpoint; nor will laboratory and clinical ends make
a genuine whole unless they have throughout a speaking acquaintance with each
other.

Physiology and pathology belong, then, in the university, because there is much
more to them as sciences than the medical school has time for. In so far, however,
as they figure in medical education, they cannot be allowed to be indifferent to this
definite function. "There must be an outlying division of workers who will keep the

1 " An individual mind appropriates those new points of view and those fragments of knowledge that
find in the mind fitting points of contact ; but others that fail to meet with suitable receptors, to bor-
row a term from the modern theory of immunity, remain unattached and alien. The more thoroughly
we can utilize existing interests and established relations, the more likely is our teaching to be real
training." Letter from Professor Edwin O. Jordan, University of Chicago.

60 MEDICAL EDUCATION

subject in touch with practical medicine, though the flower of the army, the impe-
rial guard, are busy elsewhere."1 This same consideration would appear conclusive
as to the wisdom of crediting the medical student with such subjects when pursued
in a college of liberal arts. Physiology, for instance, as an element of a liberal edu-
cation, sweeps the whole horizon impartially, interested in genetic processes, search-
ing for general laws. It works to best advantage with simple forms, — with jellyfish and
cats in preference to man : an admirable introduction to medical physiology, but not
really the same thing. It does not follow, therefore, that because professional studies
are now freely counted toward the bachelor's degree, ordinary college work in physi-
ology is equally satisfactory to the medical school. The academic purpose is vague; the
professional purpose, distinct; and a medical education is more than the sum of its
constituent courses taken separately and without reference to their ultimate object.1

So much for the point of view; certain general considerations affect equally in-
struction in all these laboratory sciences. The medical laboratories must be manned,
equipped, and organized like university laboratories devoted to non-medical subjects.
The laboratory staff consists necessarily of a chief — the professor in charge — with
a corps of paid assistants, cooperating with him in the work of teaching, busy at
other times with their problems, as he is with his, and with at least one intelligent
departmental helper (Diener) who will relieve the staff of the care and handling of
apparatus and material. The needs of pharmacology are in these respects not different
from those of physics; and the pharmacologist can as little make the teaching of
pharmacology a side issue to the practice of medicine or the conduct of a drug store
as the physicist can subordinate his academic duties to the operation of a trolley
line. Hardly less urgent is an adequate material equipment: class-rooms, laboratories
for class use, private rooms adapted to the independent work of the staff, a reference
library in regular receipt of important publications, and proper quarters for caring
for an abundant and varied supply of animals.3

In methods of instruction there is, once more, nothing to distinguish medical from
other sciences. Out-and-out didactic treatment is hopelessly antequated; it belongs

1 W. H. Howell : "The Present Problems of Physiology," Congress of Arts and Sciencet, vol. v. p. 434.
More concretely. Professor F. S. Lee (Columbia University), in discussing the medical curriculum,
wrote: "Many experiments of merely technical physiological interest should be omitted, especially
those that have only a remote connection with human physiology. . . . [In physiological chemistry]
pathological constituents [of tissues and secretions] and changes should be touched upon." Professor
Matthews (University of Chicago) took the opposite position. "As soon as possible these sciences
should follow the example of physics, botany, and chemistry and leave the medical faculty and be
regarded as subjects prerequisite to the study of medicine." The analogy seems hardly valid; physics
and chemistry are, from the standpoint of medicine, of merely instrumental value. The medical sciences
are not simply instrumental ; they deal with the actual phenomena and material which the physi-
cian handles. Professor Lee employs pathological cases to illustrate and enrich his course in pnysio-
logy at Columbia. The contrast between normal and abnormal deepens the student's impression of both.

2 The same problem presents itself in the German university. See Paulsen, loc. cit., pp. 411, 412.

* An utterly mistaken notion prevails as to the extent to which animal experimentation is practised
in this country. Only a very small minority of our medical schools use animals at all; as a matter of
fact, ordinary medical teaching suffers seriously from the failure to employ them.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 61

to an age of accepted dogma or supposedly complete information, when the professor
"knew" and the students "learned." The lecture indeed continues of limited use. It
may be employed in beginning a subject to orient the student, to indicate relations,
to forecast a line of study in its practical bearings; from time to time, too, a lecture
may profitably sum up, interpret, and relate results experimentally ascertained.
Text-books, atlases, charts, occupy a similar position. They are not, in the first place,
a substitute for sense experience, but they may well guide and fill out the student's
laboratory findings. In general, the value of the recitation and of the quiz is in pro-
portion to their concreteness and informality. Outside the workshop there is danger
of detachment and rote.

The curriculum of a medical school, requiring for admission at least a competent
knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology, offers in the first two years systematic
instruction in the following subjects:

First year: anatomy, including histology and embryology; physiology, including
bio-chemistry.

Second year: pharmacology, pathology, bacteriology, physical diagnosis.

A brief discussion will show the relations of these subjects to each other and to
the clinical work occupying the third and fourth years.

The order in which subjects are taken up is largely determined by considerations
inherent in the subjects themselves. Anatomy — the study of the architecture of the
body — comes logically first. It is indeed the oldest of laboratory sciences,1 and so fun-
damental in medical study that for a time the student may well defer all other sub-
jects whatsoever. For several centuries it was taught simply by professorial demon-
stration. During the first half of the nineteenth century, gross dissection by the
students themselves was in vogue. The subject, long almost a closed book, has tre-
mendously expanded in recent years. Embryology, histology, physiology, and patho-
logy have given it back its youth ; it is once more a green and flourishing science.2
The anatomist carries a steadily increasing load. The surgeon, embarking on hitherto
undreamed-of ventures; the clinician, guiding himself by physical indications involv-
ing the most delicate structural discrimination; the physiologist, the pharmacolo-
gist, the pathologist, — all lean upon him. With an eye to varied uses, the student
must gain a picture of the body as a working whole ; of its parts, taken severally
and in their relations; and finally of the microscopic structure of tissues and organs.
The teacher of anatomy may take one of two roads. He may attempt to forecast
literally the special requirements of each of the above branches, confining his instruc-

1 " For over six hur dred years there has been at least some practical instruction in anatomy, and for
over three hundreu years there have existed anatomical laboratories for purposes of teaching and in-
vestigation, although only those constructed during the present century (nineteenth) meet our ideas
of what an anatomical laboratory should be." Welch: The Evolution of Modern Scientific Labora-
tories: an Address delivered at the Opening of the William Pepper Laboratory, University of Penn-
sylvania, Dec. 4, 1895.

2 For an extremely readable account of the development of the science and teaching of anatomy, see
"Anatomy in America," by C. R. Bardeen, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, no. 115.

62 MEDICAL EDUCATION

tion to the indispensably useful thus arrived at; or he may handle his subject freely
— not unmindful of its practical value, but with broad scientific background and
sympathy. It needs no argument at this point to vindicate the latter policy. Dis-
section has therefore ceased to be synonymous with anatomy; for no one way of
looking at or of dealing with the cadaver will enable the student to grasp even
its gross structure. It is one thing to take the body to pieces ; it is something else
to conceive these severed and dissociated elements in stereoscopic relation ; and it is
a still further task to unravel the tissues themselves : hence, on the macroscopic side,
the prominence now given to reconstruction through drawing and modeling, and
the close study of charts and of cross-sections, of models and of special preparations
that form the indispensable teaching museum. Courses in histology and embryology,
closely correlated with gross anatomy, furnish the accompanying microscopical dis-
cipline. Something like one-fifth of all the available time of the entire medical
curriculum1 is commonly absorbed by the various branches constituting a modern
department of anatomy. How much of this may be profitably spent in the lecture-
room is yet under discussion. It needs perhaps still to be emphasized that description
is no substitute for tactile and visual experience, and that such experience, if intel-
ligently controlled, both records and organizes itself with surprisingly little formal
revamping.

Outside of anatomy, the laboratory method in medicine is considerably less than
a century old. Its rapid spread has been in conservative quarters decried as a fad;
but the facts suggest a nobler view. For the century which has developed medical
laboratories has seen the death-rate reduced by one-half and the average expectation
of life increased by ten or twelve years.* Of these laboratories, physiology had the
first, that of Purkinje, at Breslau, established in 1824. In general, the experimental
physiologist has proceeded upon the hypothesis that physiology is the physics and
chemistry of living matter. He employs the apparatus and procedure of the physical
laboratory to study the mechanical properties of tissue and the physical conditions
to which these properties respond. The mechanism of the nervous system, the circu-
lation, respiration, assimilation, muscular activity, lend themselves more or less
readily to description and interpretation from the physical point of view. The ap-
paratus and procedure of the chemical laboratory have been brought to bear in the
analysis of bodily tissues, fluids, and secretions, and in the experimental reproduction
of digestive and other processes. Not infrequently the subject is presented in two
divisions, the former called physiology, the latter physiological- or bio-chemistry.
That the mechanical standpoint has richly justified itself is indisputable; neverthe-
less, so far as concerns medical education, it is not yet ready wholly to absorb the
functional point of view. An unbridged gap exists. Whether the physical sciences
will ever so far refine their procedure as altogether to resolve function in mechanical

1 Between 3600 and 4000 hours of instruction make up the entire curriculum.
•Welch: Univerrity of Chicago Rtcord, vol. xii., no. S, p. 79.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 63

terms, it is needless here to discuss. Such an outcome is at any rate more distant than
the early investigators, in the first flush of their splendid successes, supposed :

"For long the way appears which seemed so short
To the less practised eye of early youth."

Meanwhile, whatever its limitations, the physiological laboratory is of immense edu-
cational importance to the prospective physician. Physiology is, in a sense, the cen-
tral discipline of the medical school.1 It is the business of the physician to restore
normal functioning: normal functioning is thus his starting-point in thought, his goal
in action. The physiological laboratory enables the beginner to observe the functions
of the body in operation and to ascertain how they are affected by varying conditions,
— a wholesome discipline for two reasons: it banishes from his mind metaphysical
principles, such as vital force, depression, etc. ; it tends, in exhibiting the infinite
sublety and complexity of the physiological mechanism, to emphasize normal condi-
tions rather than medication as ultimately responsible for its orderly working. The stu-
dent who has been successfully trained to regard the body as an infinitely complex
machine learns to doubt his capacity to mend it summarily. It is true he lacks time
to master any considerable part of the field which experimentation has covered from
this point of view; but characteristic and pregnant illustrations at least insure his
sanity. He may do ever so little, yet for that little he cannot take anyone's word.
His actual contact with facts puts him squarely on his feet and cures him once for
all of mystical and empiric vagaries.

Anatomy and physiology form but the vestibule of medical education. They teach
the normal structure of the body, the normal function of the parts, fluids, organs,
and the conditions under which they operate. The next step carries the student in
medias res; he begins pharmacology,2 — the experimental study of the response of
the body to medication.

The science got its problem in the first place from the credulity of which the tra-
ditional pharmacopoeia is the encyclopedic expression. It undertook to question the
complacency and vagueness of the empiric. How far was his reliance upon specific
agents justified? If at all, was it possible to ascertain the source of their efficiency
and its limits?

Pharmacology was thus originally negative and critical. It rapidly pruned away
exaggeration and superstition, leaving, however, a vigorous growth behind. It ascer-
tained, for example, that quinine was administered in vain nine times out of ten ;
but that in the single condition in which it was applicable — malaria — it struck at
the root of the disease by actually destroying in the blood the obnoxious parasite. The
limits of the effectiveness of digitalis, atropine, strychnine, have been discovered and
explained; and similarly, the utter uselessness of dozens of concoctions with which

lAbout 450 hours of instruction are devoted to it on the average, in the best schools.

8 The first laboratory of experimental pharmacology was that of Rudolph Buchheim in Dorpat, 1849.

64 MEDICAL EDUCATION

the digestive capacity of the race has long been taxed. Intelligence has thus been
introduced into a realm for ages unguardedly open to ignorance and recklessness.

The science did not long remain merely critical: the development of chemistry
and experimental physiology created a positive opportunity. Given, in a word, this
or that condition, — a disease, a symptom, or pain itself, — cannot an agent be de-
vised capable of combating it? Cocaine, the antipyretics, the various glandular
preparations, and serum therapy are among the affirmative replies that witness the
constructive possibilities of pharmacodynamics. The strictly experimental science,
thus richly rewarded, has reinforced physiological conceptions independently at work
in the effort to rationalize materia medica and therapeutics. Instead of nai've reli-
ance upon poly-pharmacy, diseases and their attendant symptoms have now been
divided into some half-dozen provisional classes, subject to continuous revision, ac-
cording to the method of attack to which they are at the moment most accessible.
There are those that drugs actually combat, — syphilis and malaria, for example;
next, the self-limited diseases, in the course of which therapeutic measures may be
used to avert dangerous symptomatic consequences, — as bathing reduces the tem-
perature in typhoid, as chloroform checks convulsions in strychnine poisoning, as
morphine relieves mere pain. There are those in which the body's natural methods
of defense may be hastened or strengthened, as through serum therapy; those in
which our only reliance thus far is on environment or suggestion; and finally, those
in which summary relief may be had through the surgeon. A great change, this, from
indiscriminate and largely ignorant dosing! The body diseased is indeed like a city
besieged. No single form of military manoeuvre can be prescribed as a sure defense;
now a sally from the main gate discomfits the enemy; again, a diversion from some
unexpected quarter; sometimes the inhabitants conserve their strength in the hope
of wearing the enemy out, feeding the soldiers at the expense of all the others; and
sometimes, as in tuberculosis, there is no hope except by actually decamping, leaving
a vacant Moscow to a cheated foe.

In the university, pharmacology has critically an extensive, creatively an appar-
ently boundless, opportunity. The medical student can at best browse the field here
and there. But as was found to be the case with experimental physiology, he cannot
forego that opportunity, limited though it be. The young doctor's therapeutic en-
vironment is still distinctly unfavorable. He is exposed to danger, front and rear.
The traditions of the profession are in the main crudely empiric; they embody a
"pop-gun pharmacy, hitting now the malady and again the patient, the doctor
himself not knowing which.""1 Besides, the practitioner is subjected, year in, year out,
to the steady bombardment of the unscrupulous manufacturer, persuasive to the un-
critical, on the principle that "what I tell you three times is true."2 Against bad

1 Osier, Aequanimitcu, p. 127.

8 "On a basis of 5000 prescriptions examined, 47 per cent are for proprietary medicines." M. G. Mot-
ter, in Bull. Amer. Acad. Med., vol. ix., no. 1.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 65

example and persistent asseveration, only precise scientific concepts and a critical
appreciation of the nature and limits of actual demonstration can protect the young
physician. The laity has in this matter more to fear from credulous doctors than
from advertisements themselves: for a nostrum containing dangerous drugs is doubly
dangerous if introduced into the household by the prescription of a physician who
knows nothing of its composition and is misled as to its effect.1 Experimental physi-
ology and pharmacology must train the student both to doubt unwarranted claims
and to be open to really authoritative suggestion: for it is equally important to
reject humbug and to accept truth. Fortunately, even a brief concrete experience
may teach one to be wary in weighing evidence.

The course in pharmacology need include, therefore, actual experimental determina-
tion by the student himself of the effect on animals of a relatively small number of
carefully selected agents; demonstration of others by the instructor; and a critical
survey of the rest by means of lectures and recitations.2 Materia medica, now much
shrunken, need concern itself only with the pharmaceutical side, aiming to familiarize
the student with drugs of proved power and the most agreeable and effective forms
in which these may be administered. Therapeutics subsequently adds to these agents
whatever other resources the clinician has accumulated, — baths, electricity, massage,
psychic suggestion, dietetics, etc., — approaching the subject from the standpoint of
disease, as opposed to the pharmacological approach from the standpoint of the drug
itself.

The last division of the medical sciences — and the most extensive — includes
pathology and bacteriology. The three subdivisions of pathology are symmetrical
with anatomy, physiology, and physiological chemistry. To the first corresponds
pathological anatomy; to the second, pathological physiology; to the third, chemical
pathology.

In its modern form the study began on a comprehensive basis when Virchow,
called from Wiirzburg, established the first pathological institute in Berlin in 1856.
His plans went far beyond the gross morbid anatomy then current. He conceived
pathology not only as a descriptive but as an experimental science, whose laws are
the laws of general biology. The pathological is not, in this view, an anarchic, extra-
legal freak ; it is the product of agencies and forces, operating on regular and inev-
itable lines. The problem of the pathologist is through observation and experiment
to get the key to the pathological process, in order that he may understand its origin
and significance, and, if necessary, avert or control it. The pathological is abnormal
from the standpoint, not of biological law, but of the human interests that it some-
times thwarts — sometimes, only; for not infrequently it is a beneficent, compensa-

1 See The Propaganda for Reform in Proprietary Medicines, published by the American Medical
Association, Chicago, 111.

2 On the average, about 150 hours are devoted to instruction in pharmacology; something more than
half of these can be given to the laboratory, the remainder to recitations.

66 MEDICAL EDUCATION

tory adjustment, actually favorable to the individual. Experimental pathology has
developed along both biological and chemical lines: the former, accentuating the
life-history of the abnormal growth, the latter, endeavoring to trace back the changes
observed to the chemical activities involved in the life-process. Somewhat recently,
a shifting of emphasis has made the physiological point of view more prominent, —
a wholesome development, medically speaking. The physician is constantly in con-
tact with disease processes that he is unable to correlate with the accompanying
structural modifications. Occasionally the surgeon throws a stream of light upon such
a situation ; too often, all is dark until the autopsy reveals the truth. Pathological
physiology aims to study structural change from the standpoint of function. It asks
primarily not what is the history of the structural modification itself, but what are
its progressive consequences to the functional routine of the organism. It reproduces
disease experimentally, interrupting its course at significant stages, in order, having
observed the functional disturbance, to ascertain exactly the structural readjustment
that corresponds. "In animals,1" says Professor Hektoen, " the course of disease may
be cut short at any time for the purpose of investigation. The disease may be studied
in all its phases. Comparative pathology became the refuge of the investigator,
blocked by the necessary restrictions governing the study of human diseases. The
great influence of the comparative method is shown in the relatively advanced state
of our knowledge in regard to human diseases readily communicable to animals, as
compared with our ignorance in regard to other human diseases which, so far as we
know, are not transferable to animals."1 For the prospective physician the value of
such a course depends, of course, on the opportunity to compare the laboratory find-
ings with the symptoms shown by patients in the hospital wards.

In general, the effective teaching of pathology is dependent on ease and frequency
of access to the autopsy-room. It would be difficult just now to over-emphasize that
point. We shall soon see that the post-mortem is in this country relatively rare and
precarious; that not infrequently pathological courses are organized and given whose
illustrative material is limited to models, to a small number of preserved specimens,
or even to bits of material already cut into microscopic sections or just lacking that
last touch. Such instruction may do justice to the subject on the histological side,
but it leaves much to the already overburdened third and fourth years. And it is
surely a serious disadvantage to the teacher of pathology to find himself year after
year teaching the subject without access to the post-mortem room.

Specimens alone — whether gross or microscopic — are inadequate for several rea-
sons. In the first place, gross fresh specimens are too perishable : they change quickly
after removal from the body and in consequence of handling during transportation ;
refrigeration avoids softening and putrefaction only at the cost of destroying the
blood, — a most important link in the chain. More important still, however, is the
consideration that disease is not an affair of a single organ or tissue, still less, of a
1 Conyrtu of Artt and Science*, voL vi. pp. 112, 113 (slightly abridged).

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 67

microscopic portion of such organ or tissue. Even an acute disease — pneumonia,
diphtheria — involves the body as a whole; chronic defects — such as heart lesion or
cancer — affect the organism likewise in its entire extent. The pathologist, then, seek-
ing to convey to the student an objective conception of the nature and effects of
disease as a process, needs the entire body in order to do so. Pathology is taught for
that purpose; it fails of its object just so far as the lack of autopsies makes it im-
possible. Cancer, for example, is not a local disturbance involving this or that organ.
The student who is expected to grasp its character cannot do so if all he does is to
see a cross-section put up in gelatine, or to handle a papier-mache reproduction, or
to observe the cell changes on a small slide. These things are well enough as far as
they go, but they go only a short distance. The cancerous process is complicated and
extensive. Other organs, far from the original site of the disease, are involved ; nay,
the original site itself may be in question. The vastness of the involvements, the re-
lationships of affected locations to each other, the response of the bodily mechanism
fighting to achieve a readjustment — only the autopsy can disclose these; and with-
out them, the student cannot attain an intelligent conception of the subject he is
studying.

Pathology's greatest contribution to the comprehension and mastery of disease
has been by way of illuminating its causation, — or etiology. The student who is to
comprehend the significance of disease must not only make the inventory of results
disclosed by the post-mortem : he should be allowed to observe the process from the
very start. To this end, a demonstrative course, using living animals, must be pro-
vided. Tuberculosis, for example, should be exhibited through the inoculation of a
few guinea pigs with different varieties of the tubercle bacilli, showing the various
ways in which the bacilli enter and are distributed, and the variety of lesions that
they produce.

We thus cross the threshold of still another science, bacteriology, developed in
late years in close sympathy with pathology. It presents the same two sides, — bio-
logical and chemical; the former investigating the life-history of the microscopic
organism, the latter isolating and resolving its, toxic or other products. The search
of the pathologist for the original causation of abnormal structural change has been
immensely facilitated by the bacteriologist He can now account for as well as de-
scribe the ravaged tissues that mark the path of a diphtheritic, typhoid, or tuber-
culous infection. Out of the life-history of the parasites in question has sprung the
serum therapy, which has already stripped tetanus, diphtheria, and meningitis of
much of their horror.

Perhaps even more important than its services to curative, have been the sugges-
tions of bacteriology to preventive, medicine. It is hardly too much to say that mo-
dern hygiene, largely the outcome of bacteriology, has elevated the physician from
a mainly personal to a mainly social status. Directly or indirectly, disease has been
found to depend largely on unpropitious environment. A bad water-supply, defective

68 MEDICAL EDUCATION

drainage, impure food, unfavorable occupational surroundings, — matters, all of them,
for social regulation, — at once harbor our parasitic enemies and reduce our powers
of resisting them. To the intelligent and conscientious physician, a typhoid patient
is not only a case, but a warning : his office it is equally to heal the sick and to pro-
tect the well. The public health laboratory belongs, then, under the wing of the
medical school. It is the clearing-house into which data from an entire state should
pour. Tax-supported institutions are most favorably circumstanced in this respect.
The material which they readily accumulate is at once a basis for teaching, for in-
vestigation, and for practical sanitation. Thus the laboratory sciences all culminate
and come together in the hygienic laboratory; out of which emerges the young
physician, equipped with sound views as to the nature, causation, spread, prevention,
and cure of disease, and with an exalted conception of his own duty to promote
social conditions that conduce to physical well-being.

From the standpoint of medical education, a detached academic or scientific treat-
ment of pathology and bacteriology would sacrifice needlessly much of their value.
Both subjects are, indeed, full-grown biological sciences, — university subjects, capa-
ble of cultivation only in special laboratories, closely affiliated with general biology
and chemistry. But the medical student in the brief five hundred hours which he
can at most secure for them gains the clearest insight into their philosophy and
their bearing by following out their principles mainly in the small group of phe-
nomena illustrated in human disease. Experimental pathology concerns him because
it enables him later to conceive his clinical problems intelligently. From an early
hour in his pathological work, the student may then begin in the autopsy-room to
saturate himself with the clinical spirit. This is not to be confused with the prema-
ture "cutting" or the impatient "prescribing" to which the old-fashioned medical
student was addicted. "Cutting" and "prescribing" may still be two years distant;
but meanwhile it is both possible and "important to keep ever before the student
the part which the work he is doing plays in leading to a more complete compre-
hension of disease."1

One closes a brief review of the medical sciences with a feeling akin to dismay.
So much remains to find out,- so much is already known, — how futile to orient the
student from either standpoint! Practically, however, there is no ground for despair.
Enough can be achieved to give him precise conceptions in each of the realms touched
upon; and the actual value of these conceptions and of the habits grounded on them
depends less on the extent of his acquisitions than on his sense of their reality.8
Didactic information, like mere hearsay, leaves this sense pale and ineffective; a first-

1 Report of Committee on Pathology, Council on Education, Araer. Med. Assn., Bulletin of Arner.
Jted. Aim., Sept 15, 1909, p. 47.

* That method rather than any particular content is the very essence of scientific discipline is admi-
rably pointed out by Professor Dewey in his address "Science as Subject-matter and as Method,"
Science, xxxi., no. 787, p. 122. "Science has been taught too much as an accumulation of ready-made
material, with which students are to be made familiar, not enough as a method of thinking, an
attitude of mind, after the pattern of which mental habits are to be transformed."

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 69

hand experience, be it ever so fragmentary, renders it vivid. After a strenuous labo-
ratory discipline, the student will still be ignorant of many things, but at any rate
he will respect facts : he will have learned how to obtain them and what to do with
them when he has them.

NOTE

For the details of a course of study, framed on the lines above described, the reader
is referred to the following:

A. GENERAL,

1. Report of Curriculum Committee, Council on Education, American Medical Asso-

ciation, Bulletin of the Amer. Med. Asm., September, 1909.

2. What Constitutes a Medical Curriculum f Issued by Association of American Med-

ical Colleges.

3. COLWELL, N. P.: In Bulletin of American Academy of Medicine, vol. x., no. 3.

4. BILLKOTH, T. : Ueber Lehren und Lernen in Medicin.

5. BICKEL, ADOLF: Wie Studiert man Medizinf (Stuttgart, 1906).

B. SPECIAL SUBJECTS

1. Anatomy.

BARKER, L. F., and BARDEEN, C. R. : Outline of Course in Normal Histology and

Microscopic Anatomy, Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, vol. xii., nos. 62, 63.
BARKER, L. F., and KYES, P. : On Teaching of Normal Anatomy of Central Nervous

System to Large Classes of Medical Students, Proc. Assn. Amer. Anat., 1900.
BARKER, L. F. : Study of Anatomy, Journal Amer. Med. Assn., March, 1901.
DWIGHT, T. : Methods of Teaching Anatomy at Harvard Medical School, Boston

Med. and Surg. Journal, vol. cxxiv. pp. 457-77.

HUNTINGTON, G. S. : The Teaching of Anatomy, Columbia University Bulletin, 1898.
KEILLER, W. : On Preservation of Subjects for Dissection, etc., Amer. Jour. Anat.,

1902-3, vol. ii.

McMuRRicK, J. P. : Conservatism in Anatomy, Anat. Record, vol. iii., no. 1.
MALL, F. P. : The Anatomical Course and Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University,

Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, vol. vii., nos. 62, 63.
MALL, F. P.: On Teaching Anatomy, etc., Ibid., vol. xvi., no. 167.
MALL, F. P. : On the Teaching of Anatomy, Anat. Record, vol. ii., no. 8.
MOODY, R. C. : On the Use of Clay Modelling in the Study of Osteology, Johns Hop-

Jcins Hospital Bulletin, 1903, vol. xiv.

2. Physiology.

PORTER, W. T. : The Teaching of Physiology in Medical Schools, Boston Med. and
Surg. Journal, December 29, 1898.

70 MEDICAL EDUCATION

CHITTENDEN, R. H. : The Importance of Physiological Chemistry as a Part of Medi-
cal Education, N. Y. Med. Journal, September 30, 1898.

BOWDITCH, H. P. : The Study of Physiology, Univ. Pa. Med. Bulletin, June, 1904.

HOWELL, W. H. : Instruction in Physiology in Med. Schools, The Michigan Alumnus,
January, 1900.

LEE, F. S. : Physiology (Series : Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art, Columbia
Univ. Press, 1909).

5. Pharmacology.

ABEL, J. J. : On the Teaching of Pharmacology, Materia Medica, and Therapeutics,
Phila. Med. Jour., September 1, 1900.

SOLLMAN, T. : The Teaching of Therapeutics and Pharmacology from the Experi-
mental Standpoint, Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., September 6, 1902.

4. Pathology and Bacteriology.

ADAMI, J. G. : On the Teaching of Pathology, Phua. Med. Jour., 1900, pp. 399-402.

DELEPINE, A. S. : On the Place of Pathology in Medical Education, Brit. Med. Jour.,
1896, vol. ii.

JORDAN, E. O. : Place of Pathology in the University, Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., 1907,
vol. xlviii. p. 917.

BARKER, L. F. : On Methods of Studying Pathology, Amer. Text-Book of Path., Phila-
delphia, 1901.

5. Hygiene.

DITMAN, N. E. : Education and its Economic Value in the Field of Preventive Med-
icine, Columbia University Quarterly, vol. x., supplement to no. 3, June, 1908.

WINSLOW, C. E. A. : Teaching of Biology and Sanitary Science in the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Tech. Quarterly, vol. xix., no. 4, December, 1906.

WESBROOK, F. F.: The Laboratory in Public Health Work, Twelfth Biennial Report
of Iowa State Board of Health.

WESBROOK, F. F. : The Public Health Laboratory, Jour. Amer. Med., vol. xi., no. 9.

CHAPTER V

THE COURSE OF STUDY: THE LABORATORY BRANCHES

(B) FIRST AND SECOND YEAKS (CONTINUED)

WITH the preceding characterization, the schools included in our first division l on
the whole agree. They are all organic parts of full-fledged universities ; their medical
courses are as a rule constructed upon the basis of adequate pre-medical scientific
training. In general, the laboratories of institutions upon a college basis reflect uni-
versity ideals in equipment, management, and appearance.2 As a rule these institu-
tions have at least four separate laboratories, for anatomy, physiology and bio-chem-
istry, pharmacology, pathology and bacteriology. As their resources have grown, the
departments have tended to increase by subdivision : histology, physiological chem-
istry, clinical pathology, bacteriology, attain departmental stature. Hygiene is es-
pecially prominent at the state universities, where effective departments of public
health bring the laboratories of pathology and bacteriology into fruitful relation
with local authorities and the local profession throughout the state ; and endowed
schools are making determined efforts to develop departments of preventive medi-
cine. In some cases abundant, in several others increasing, facilities are offered in all
branches for both teaching and research; and teaching and research permeate each
other. The various departments, in intimate communication with each other and with
the general science work of the institution, are officered each by its own full-time
professor, in most instances with a more or less satisfactory corps of paid assistants.
Within these active hives of scientific interest a thoroughly charming relation pre-
vails: a vigorous, stimulating, and appreciative chief, on the one hand, enjoying the
cooperation of enthusiastic young disciples on the other. It is difficult to realize that so
substantial an organization is so recent, — hardly more than a half-century old in Ger-
many, less than twenty years old in America. In this brief period the earlier subordi-
nates have themselves become departmental heads in their own schools, or have gone
forth to found or to reconstruct distant institutions. Laboratories have increased in
number so rapidly that the rewards of early promise or of early performance have
been alike great and prompt. It is unlikely that this pace will permanently keep up.
In anatomy and physiology it occasionally occurs that the departmental head is
not himself a graduate in medicine.3 This innovation arises out of a dual motive : it

1 i. e. , those requiring for entrance two or more years of college work ; a list of them is given on page 28.

a A few of these, formerly on a lower basis, have elevated their entrance requirements, while leav-
ing facilities as they were. Several schools are pledged to higher entrance requirements, though quite
unable to improve their facilities. Indeed, as higher standards mean fewer students and reduced in-
come, their facilities may suffer deterioration.

3 Occasionally the dean of a medical school is a non-medical man. In such cases it is extremely im-
portant that he be in close sympathy with the clinical side and well acquainted with modern devel-
opments in clinical teaching. Even more dangerous is the expedient of making a professor in the
academic department dean of the medical department.

72 MEDICAL EDUCATION

represents a reaction from the superficial methods of the practitioner professor, as
well as a realization of the essential continuity of medical with biological science. The
non-medical professor is not necessarily indifferent to explicit medical reference; his
department need not lack sympathy with medicine merely because he has no M.D.
degree; and his disinterested attitude is in any event indispensable. But the experi-
ment is not free from danger, and its outcome will be watched with interest. Mean-
while, there is no question that these posts cannot be satisfactorily filled by active
physicians. The practitioner usually lacks impartial and eager scientific spirit; he
can at best give set hours to teaching, and these are not infrequently interrupted
by a patient's superior claim; of course he has little or no time and rarely any zest
for research. Western Reserve and the New York City department of Cornell, alone
of schools of this rank, continue an active surgeon in the chair of anatomy.

Of the twenty-five institutions either now, or by the fall of 1910 to be, on the two-
year college basis, or more, fourteen1 offer the entire four-year course in one organized
institution ; five8 are divided, offering the laboratory branches in one place and the
clinical branches, more or less independently organized, in another, sometimes close
by, at other times widely separated; six3 are half-schools, offering only the work
of the first and second years. The complete school in touch with the rest of the
university represents the normal and correct form. The study of medicine must
center around disease in concrete, individual forms. The ease with which the clinics
and the laboratories may there illuminate each other is an incontestable advantage
to both. It is difficult to imagine effective teaching of pathology, for example, under
conditions where the operating-room, the medical clinic, and the autopsy do not
constantly contribute specimens and propound queries to the laboratory; and assuredly
the teaching of medicine and surgery cannot proceed intelligently without constant
intercourse with the laboratories. Any disintegration of hospitals and laboratories is
harmful to both, — and to the student, in shaping whom they must cooperate. So
important is organic wholeness that the remote department, if entire, is from
all points of view preferable to division. The initial difficulty — that of sharing
the university ideals — may be met by liberal provision for intercourse with the
academic body and by redoubled efforts to maintain creative activity, as Cornell,
for example, has done at New York. Fortunately, our needs in respect to medical

1 Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Western Reserve, Minnesota, Cornell (New York City department), Yale,
Michigan, Indiana (Indianapolis department), Iowa, Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Columbia, Dartmouth,
Colorado. Of these, two are not located in the same town as the university, — Cornell (New York
City), Indiana (Indianapolis).

'Rush Medical College (of which, though both parts are in Chicago, the first two years belong to the
University of Chicago, and the last two, given elsewhere in the city, are only affiliated with it), Cali-
fornia (first and second years at Berkeley, third and fourth at San Francisco and Los Angeles),
Nebraska (first and second years at Lincoln, third and fourth at Omaha), Kansas (first and second
years at Lawrence, third and fourth at Rosedale), Stanford (first and second years at Palo Alto, third
and fourth at San Francisco).

•Wisconsin, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah, Wake Forest. Cornell repeats the first
year at Ithaca; Indiana duplicates the first and second years at Bloomington.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 73

schools can be met without considerable resort to either the divided or the remote
department.1

The divided school begins by inheriting a serious problem. Its laboratory end,
situated at the university, has been recently constituted of modern men; the clinical
end, situated in a city at some distance, is usually what is left of the old-fashioned
school which the university adopted in taking on its medical department.2 In such
cases, there are practically two schools with a formal connection; such is essentially
the situation in California, Kansas, and Nebraska. In course of time these clinical
faculties will be reconstituted of men of more modern stamp. But the separation of
the clinical branch, with the increasing absorption of the teachers in practice, in-
volves constant danger of fresh alienation. The clinical professor of the university
is very apt to be a busy physician; and if so, pedagogical and scientific ideals are all
the more easily crowded into a narrow corner, when he does not breathe the bracing
atmosphere of adjacent laboratories. In time, a more exacting pedagogical code and
increased sensitiveness to real scientific distinction may to some extent correct the ten-
dency. Meanwhile, these institutions, so long as they continue, require much more vig-
orous administrative supervision than they have anywhere received. A dean, moving
freely between the two branches, and frequent opportunities for social and scientific
intercourse between scientific and clinical faculties, may throw a more or less unsteady
bridge across the gap. But there is little reason to believe that the divided school will
ever function as an organic whole, though it may be tolerable as a halfway stage on the
road from the proprietary school to the complete university department. "I cannot
help wondering," said President Pritchett,3 "how it would affect the pedagogic and
professional ideals of an engineering school if its first two years were given in one
place and the last two years in a place two hundred miles away. My impression is
that there would be two separate schools with very little more reaction, the one upon
the other, than exists between any other two schools so located." Thus far the diffi-
culty seems hardly to have been suspected: the dean of Nebraska at Lincoln is a
busy professor who has no real hold on the clinical men at Omaha; the dean of Cali-
fornia is superintendent of the hospital in San Francisco, with no real control of what
goes on at Berkeley, and surely without any possible control over the second clinical
department at Los Angeles ; Kansas practically accepts the split by setting up a dean
at each of the two ends, though they are only an hour and a half apart; Mississippi,
with even better reason, does the same, for the journey from Oxford to Vicksburg,
not great when measured in miles, takes the better part of a day even if one is lucky
enough to make the necessary railroad connections.

The problem of the half-school is different. The two-year school originated in

1 See chapter ix.

2 In a measure, also still true of some of the complete schools; but the constant contact of laboratory
and clinical men tends gradually to bring the edges together.

8 Address : "The Obligations of the University to Medical Education," before Council on Education,
American Medical Association, Feb. 28, 1910 (Journal A. M. A., vol. liv. p. 1109).

74 MEDICAL EDUCATION

institutional expediency; but it may prove of actual pedagogical importance. When
Columbia and Michigan arranged that the four years of the A.B. course might con-
tain two years of the M.D. course, institutions lacking medical departments were
impelled to offer just enough of the medical curriculum to meet the competition.
The half-school thus avoids loss of time to the student and loss of students to the
university. The arrangement took advantage of the break in the middle between
the laboratory and the clinical years; but a deeper reason made the experiment
feasible.

The bachelor's course has under modern conditions a double aim : it is simultane-
ously cultural and vocational. The sciences fundamental to medicine have obviously
both characters: they are vocational to the extent that they are instrumentally in-
dispensable; they are cultural, as is all enlarging and releasing experience, whether
of men, books, or travel. Culture is indeed in this aspect an incidental value of all
novel experience. So far, then, the combined course may be fairly said to be feasible,
because it enriches the college curriculum ; and the college may do well to offer the
opportunity.

Is the scheme equally sound from the standpoint of medical education ? The pro-
fessional and cultural standpoints, though obviously overlapping, are not identical.
The professional purpose involves greater concentration, is on the lookout for definite
correlations, and steers towards an evident practical goal. The medical curriculum
possesses a certain organic unity in virtue of the fact that each of its parts does this
same thing. The college as college is indifferent to the ultimate practical bearing;
the medical school cannot afford to forget it. As to certain subjects, indeed, there
is perhaps little to choose. The college has already taken chemistry wholly out of the
medical curriculum ; it may be allowed to take bio-chemistry, too. In reference, how-
ever, to other subjects, pathology, physiology, etc., it is important — once more
from the standpoint of medical education — to distinguish between two forms which
the combined course assumes. To take advantage of it at Columbia or Michigan —
complete four-year schools — the student goes over into the medical department,
which is compactly organized with laboratories and clinics interwoven. He spends
the entire period of four years there. The college has nothing to do with it beyond
registering his credits for the first two years towards his A.B. degree. That fact makes
absolutely no difference to the medical teachers. The student is trained for four years
just as he would be trained if he had his A.B. degree to start with. The combined
course in this form exacts no sacrifice from the medical school.

In the case of the half-school or the divided school the situation is different: the
medical subjects are apt to be parceled out among the general scientific laboratories,
and there are no clinics or clinicians at all. The professors themselves may lack medi-
cal training. There is no observable goal to steady or beckon the teacher.1 Counting

1 The medical department of the University of Wisconsin, a half-school, combats the difficulty by
appointing a professor of clinical medicine.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 75

the two years' work as the latter half of the A. B. course may, under these circum-
stances, distinctly weaken it from the medical standpoint. It is, of course, true that
the German medical schools are without the sort of organization we are now empha-
sizing; but they have what we lack, ideals and traditions. Dispersion does not cost
them their point of view. When our ideals are as sound, we too may be capable of
dispensing with a more or less formal organization. Some of our schools may already
be.1 Would it, however, be equally safe even in Germany, if there were no clinics
at all?

Take, for instance, the subject of pathology. The two-year school, remote from hos-
pitals and autopsies, can provide museum specimens, models, and microscopic mounts.
Under favorable conditions, animal experimentation can still further supplement its
resources. But the pathologist will suffer from isolation; he is part of the college, but
not part of a hospital, and what is hurtful to him cannot be helpful to his students.
For them much depends on the arrangement of courses in the institution to which
they emigrate for their third and fourth years. Meanwhile, in any case, at the fateful
moment of their introduction to the subject, however admirably they may have been
drilled in the specific content of the course, little advantage can be taken of their
general absorptive power. For even a fair student, while learning his lessons in patho-
logical histology, might assimilate incidentally much that goes beyond. Not infre-
quently what is most stimulating in his experience would be thus obtained. It would
appear, then, that, while the college will surely gain, it is not certain that the medi-
cal curriculum may not lose when the first and second years are separated or de-
tached.

There would be the less necessity for the cautious attitude here taken in reference
to the two-year school if these departments were everywhere organized, as they have
been by Wisconsin, Cornell, Missouri, and Indiana, with a keen appreciation of the
ditiiculties to be surmounted and with financial resources capable of coping with them.
Apparatus, books, animals, laboratory material, must be provided in abundance. In
the institutions above mentioned they are. Too frequently, however, apparatus is
limited, books are scarce, animals hard to get, running expenses reduced to a mere pit-
tance. Skilled assistants and competent helpers may also be lacking. The teachers are
young and well trained; but their professorial salaries are paid to them in part for
menial labor. They care for apparatus, get it out, put it away, prepare all demon-
strations and experiments, and clean up after class. Be the students ever so few, rou-
tine drudgery and isolation will wear out the enthusiasm of their instructors. The
men will grow stale, the department sterile. As the two-year schools now generally re-
quire two years of college work for entrance, they cannot be parsimoniously organ-
ized. Yet their rapid spread seems to indicate a mistaken notion that the laboratory
years can safely be conducted on a small scale at comparatively slight expense.

1 For an extremely lucid and able discussion from this point of view see the Harvard Bulletin, Nov. 3,
1909 : "Education in Medicine: The Relations of the Medical School to the College."

76 MEDICAL EDUCATION

A uniform or fixed apportionment between various subjects is in schools of the
highest grade neither feasible nor desirable. The endeavor to improve medical edu-
cation through iron-clad prescription of curriculum or hours is a wholly mistaken
effort; while mechanical regulation cannot essentially improve the poorer schools, it
may very seriously hamper competent institutions. There is no one way to study
medicine, still less one way to advance it. If the teaching is in inferior hands, printed
directions will not save it. The prescribed curriculum is a staff upon which those
lean who have not strength to walk alone.

Fortunately, current practice varies widely. The Johns Hopkins, for example, offers
700 hours' instruction in anatomy, of which about 400 are required, Harvard 427 ;
Rush gives 108 hours to histology, Cornell 265; Columbia requires 490 hours in
anatomy, embryology, and histology; Harvard gives 513 hours to pathology, Western
Reserve 304. These discrepancies are of slight importance, for the medical curriculum
is throughout constituted of overlapping parts : apparent deficiencies in one subject
are supplied in another. Physiology revises and mends anatomy, and the clinical years
may be safely relied on to build out here and there the details of pathology. A certain
carefully selected, irreducible minimum in each subject must of course be common
throughout these institutions; the rest may be left open, to vary from school to
school, and within each school to vary to some extent with different individuals. The
medical school is above collegiate grade ; it is a professional school on a college basis.
Its students are presumably mature and will doubtless prove increasingly well trained.
They are fit to be trusted with a certain degree of discretion, in a field within which
selection between alternatives of equal importance must in any event take place.
The fourth year at Harvard is left open to choice ; at Johns Hopkins one-fourth of
each year is subject to election ; intensive study at certain points is encouraged with-
out endangering the fundamentals common to all. The problem of medical education
and orientation is not otherwise manageable. In the effort to force every important
subject as it has developed into the common curriculum — be it ever so inadequately
— the average curriculum now calls for something like 4000 hours of prescribed work.
The demand is an impossible one.1 It originates partly in the effort to make the medical
school repair the omissions of preliminary education; higher standards will relegate
something at least to the high school and college, and so far relieve congestion. As
for the rest, we require a modified conception of what any sort of school can and
ought to attempt. The mature student, competently guided, needs not to be policed
like the "breeching scholar in the schools." His every moment must not be preempted
by an assigned task. Von Striimpell rebukes the same tendency in Germany: "Some-
what more rarely in the first, very often, however, in the later semesters, many students
hear lectures for eight to ten hours a day. From morning to night their time is taken
up with classes; they rush out of one lecture hall into another, hearing a huge mass
of facts and theories put forward. One can readily imagine the condition inside their
1 A large percentage of students are making up preliminary "conditions" besides.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 77

heads by the time night comes. The actual outcome of this absurd overcrowding is
that only a small amount of what is heard is retained. One can profitably listen only
when one can take in readily and follow up systematically with work at home."1

The maturity of the student body at this level makes possible another innovation.
The low standard or immature type of medical student must have his medical
knowledge carefully administered in homeopathic doses. He carries a half-dozen
studies simultaneously because his untutored interest fatigues easily and his assimi-
lative ability in any one direction is relatively slight. Time and energy are of course
lost in hourly breaking off one connection and making another. But it is unavoidable;
the practitioner teacher must leave at the close of his " hour" anyhow. At the uni-
versity studies may be concentrated. The laboratories are open all day; the profes-
sors are there at work.2 The first months of the medical curriculum are then given
over to anatomy alone; for it is clearly illogical to begin even physiology till the
anatomist has made some headway. Concentration 3 is economical of time and energy,
and stimulates the student to push on beyond definitely prescribed limits. How far
it can wisely be carried is a point to be determined by experiment.

The schools of our second division — those requiring for admission high school
graduation or the "equivalent" — move within narrower limits. Two factors are at
work. Most schools of this class live on their fees; McGill, Toronto, Tulane, are
among the few that are enabled by additional resources to provide a complete lab-
oratory outfit. The strongest of the others, Jefferson and Northwestern University,
for example, relying practically altogether on income from students, can at best de-
velop highly a department or two;4 the rest are necessarily restricted. The quality of
the student body is likewise a limitation. Laboratory courses, following the lines that
we have marked out, are impossible to boys whose preliminary training in science has
barely begun. At best the students have an elementary acquaintance with physics or
chemistry; frequently not even that. Those that have and those that have not sit side
by side on the same benches. A difficult dilemma is thus presented. It is impossible
to teach the medical without the pre- medical sciences; the medical course, already
crowded, cannot be either cut or compressed sufficiently to accommodate them. The
situation cannot, therefore, be wholly retrieved within the medical school. Makeshifts
vary somewhat from school to school. A rigid medical curriculum, clipped to the quick,
leaves perhaps a few hundred hours available for pre-medical work. Chemistry as a
rule absorbs them all; nothing is attempted in biology; occasionally physics gets a
slight opportunity, as at Tulane, where first-year students hear one lecture a week,

1 Ueber den Medizinisch-Klinischen Unterricht, p. 11 (Leipzig, 1901). To the same effect. Professor
T. Clifford Albutt: On Professional Education, p. 49 (Macmiflan, 1906).

2 "Die Studierenden sollen jederzeit eintreten diirfen," Virchow's laboratory motto, quoted by Orth :
Berliner Med. Woch. Sch. vol. xliii. p. 820.

3 See "The Concentration Plan of Teaching Medicine," by H. A. Christian, Proceed. Asm. Amer.
Med. Colleges, March, 1910.

* See p. 133.

78 MEDICAL EDUCATION

"abundantly illustrated,** or at St. Louis University, where sixty-four hours of didactic
instruction are devoted to the subject.1

After all, however, there are different ways of meeting even a desperate condition ;
and in this instance the variations are within limits amazingly wide.3 There are schools
that sink ignominiously without a struggle; others that take advantage of the stu-
dent's plight to palm off cheap instruction at a profit; and a small number that by
valiant effort minimize, and to no slight degree surmount, the difficulty. According
as an institution reacts in one or another of these ways, we make out three main
varieties among schools on the high school basis :

1. Those that by careful selection of students and extraordinary pains in teaching
make the very most of the situation;

2. Those that, content to operate on a lower plane, are still commercially effective;
8. Those that are frankly mercenary.

We shall briefly consider these three types in succession.

(1) These schools form a small minority. They are straining hard to get from the
high school to the college basis; in equipment, organization, and scientific spirit
they are to greater or less degree already there. They have usually four scientific
departments,8 already in most instances well equipped, each in charge of a full-time
professor, for whom private quarters and more or less free time 4 procure some op-
portunity to push ahead. Energy, sincerity, and intelligence are abundantly in evi-
dence throughout these institutions. In resources they vary greatly, but in spirit they
are alike; and all are admirable. Every possible point is scored : the more difficult the
contest, the keener the play. However scant the resources, something is put into
books; however hard pressed the instructor, a museum, carefully catalogued and
labeled, has been painfully assembled.

Of schools of this type, two Canadian institutions — McGill and Toronto — de-
serve especial attention. In point of laboratory equipment they equal Minnesota and
Michigan; their lower entrance requirement, minimized by conscientious adherence
to a strict interpretation of their announced standards, is now compensated by the
addition of a fifth year to the curriculum.6 At Toronto the teaching is wholly in

1 Sometimes the provision is sheer make-believe. At Denver and Gross College of Medicine (Denver,
Col.) the physics is thus described: " One hour each week in practical chemistry as applied to med-
icine. The first year's work will include medical physics, chemic philosophy, and organic compounds."
Catalogue, 1908-9, p. 22.

1 See table at close of this chapter.

3 Anatomy, chemistry, physiology (including pharmacology), pathology (including bacteriology and
hygiene).

4 How much, depends on the quality of the assistants furnished. There is great variation in this
respect

'This is a very different thing from adding a year devoted to pre-medical sciences taught by the
medical faculty of a proprietary school, — a makeshift without possibility of development. The Cana-
dian year is a year in the university, where teachers of science are in position to do their subjects
justice ; eventually a second year will be demanded. The optional fifth year offered by our pro-
prietary schools is commercially profitable and educationally futile. See page 47.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 79

charge of full-time instructors, for whose original work splendid provision has been
made in laboratories of ideal construction and admirable equipment. McGill is in
respect to full-time teachers somewhat less fortunate ; but its great museum, recently
much damaged by fire, proves that genuine enthusiasm may succeed contrary to all
the established rules of the game. In both institutions the shortcomings of the stu-
dent body, instead of excusing perfunctory work, have rather been regarded as an
obstacle to be overcome, a condition to be met. The students have had little high
school science: all the more reason, then, to provide excellent laboratories, skilful
teachers, abundant assistants. In keeping with effective performance are their mod-
esty and candor. The number of "greatest anatomists" and "greatest pathologists"
teaching on small salaries in obscure places in the United States, and of laboratories
" as good as Johns Hopkins," is nothing less than staggering. Nor is a boastful pride
in mediocrity lacking even in institutions of some real merit. At Toronto and McGill
one hears in the medical schools no such bravado. There they deprecate the defects,
which they hasten to show for fear they may escape notice. The absence of compe-
tition1— be it business competition between schools conducted for profit, or academic
competition between endowed or tax-supported institutions, mad to "make a show-
ing"— may perhaps be responsible for their more guarded utterance and more as-
sured ideals.

Perhaps a dozen institutions in the United States belong with greater or less right
to the category under consideration. Regard being had to the quality of the student
body, to the number of full-time teachers and assistants, and to the adequacy of
laboratories, museum, and library, the best of them, in respect to the first and second
years, are New York University, Syracuse,2 Northwestern University, Jefferson Medi-
cal College (Philadelphia), Tulane University (New Orleans), St. Louis University,
the University of Texas, handicapped though some of them are in one respect or
another by resources inadequate to the ambition and competency of their faculties
and by a student body of somewhat uneven composition. St. Louis University affords
an excellent example of a brave, uphill contest, by no means barren of result. Unable
for the moment to do all it wishes, it has, like a good general, concentrated its
effort at critical points. It secures a pervasive scientific atmosphere in the first two
years through the intensive cultivation of anatomy and physiology. The departmental
head of the former subject stipulated that his routine work be kept in close bounds;
with wise liberality he has been provided with an assistant professor, a draughtsman,
and a competent helper; the productive department thus created has invigorated the
entire school on the laboratory side.

To the schools just described we must look for such further facilities in high-grade
medical education as the country still requires. Their ideals are correct ; they lack
only the means; and these they have already in comparative poverty shown the ca-

1 There are eight medical schools in British America.

2 Already requiring more than four-year high school education.

80 MEDICAL EDUCATION

pacity to use. Once the necessary resources have been bestowed upon them, the re-
maining task will be merely the absorption or the suppression of the various types
of medical school yet to be discussed. It is surely significant that with but a single
exception, these schools are also, like those of the first division, bona-Jide university
departments.

So much for the best type of medical school on the high school basis. We consider
next (2) the schools that on the same basis are shrewdly and more or less outspokenly
commercial. A few of them — those at Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore — have
accumulated extensive and, in one or two departments, elaborate plants.1 They are
on a routine level and, within the limits marked out by state board examinations,
pedagogically effective. They drill their students energetically in the elements of such
of the sciences as they touch at all, but the atmosphere is at best that of a success-
ful factory. There is no free scientific spirit. The teaching of chemistry at the Medico-
Chirurgical College of Philadelphia is an extreme case in point. The course is sub-
divided into fixed lessons, each of them so much raw material, for which the student
receives a voucher, to be returned in proper shape before he can get the voucher for
the succeeding task. The vouchers returned constitute an automatic record of atten-
dance and form the basis of an oral quiz by an instructor. "The whole system is an
imitation of the business system in vogue in the better organized business offices."" 2
Mechanically admirable, no doubt; but what convincing evidence the system itself
affords of the unfitness of the students for the study of modern medicine!

Two schools of this group — the Long Island College Hospital (Brooklyn) and the
Albany Medical School — are closely affiliated with laboratories which provide good
teaching in certain branches : the Hoagland Laboratory at Brooklyn relieves the school
of histology, pathology, and bacteriology; the Bender Laboratory at Albany carries
the laboratory work in the same subjects. It will be noted that physiology and
pharmacology are not properly provided by either; neither are they by the school.
One might suppose that the school, relieved at one point, would become more effec-
tive at another. Not at all. Both schools pay in dividends to prosperous practitioners
the sums that should be used in completing their fundamental instruction.

Scientifically, then, these schools may be called inert. They rarely cultivate any re-
search at all; their faculties are generally composed of active practitioners whose
training has rarely been modern. By way of exception Louisville has four full-time
professors in the fundamental branches, the Medico-Chirurgical three, Creighton one.
But very rarely has the full-time teacher opportunity to work ahead. His time and
energies are bespoken by heavy routine, unlightened by a competent or organized
force of assistants and helpers. In general, school positions are valued as professional

1 Preeminently the Medico-Chirurgical (Philadelphia), University of Maryland and College of Physi-
cians and Surgeons (Baltimore), and College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago.

' From a description by the head of the department.

•Strictly speaking, even these are not full-time men in the medical school, since they also teach in

pharmacy and dental departments.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 81

stepping-stones, not as scientific opportunities; laboratories are often slovenly and, ex-
cept during class hours, entirely abandoned. Strange professorial combinations are
found : anatomy and surgery, very commonly ; clinical medicine and physiology, at
the University of Maryland; orthopaedic surgery and pathology, at the Baltimore
Medical College ; medicine and pathology, at the Chicago College of Medicine and
Surgery (Valparaiso University); pathology and the physical directorship of the
academic department, at Bowdoin. Scientific chairs are held by non-residents at the Uni-
versities of Colorado l and Vermont2 and at the Medical School of Maine (Bowdoin); *
and itinerant teachers, giving the same branches at several schools, are to be found
in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. If the larger institutions under consideration
chance to contain a full-time teacher, his time usually belongs equally to dental and
pharmacy departments, developed as "business propositions" to keep the plant con-
stantly going; despite the manifest incongruity, dental or pharmacy students mingle
in the same classes with medical students at the Medico-Chirurgical College (Phila-
delphia), Temple University (Philadelphia), and the Creighton Medical College
(Omaha).4 Occasionally a non-practising teacher will be found who is simultaneously
holder of a municipal office, to which he devotes his main thought. The medical
school gets the few brief hours that it pays for. Thus the non-practising professor
of chemistry at the Creighton school is the city gas inspector; the professor of bacteri-
ology at Denver and Gross is city bacteriologist,6 with his laboratory at the City
Hall. In the few cases where a non-practising full-time professor is found,6 he is
swamped with work ; for he has as a rule only student assistants to aid him in coping
with several hundred pupils utterly inexperienced in laboratory manipulation.

For many years a school of this sort was a veritable gold mine to its owners. Fees
were divided outright, or invested in buildings which the faculty owned. Once in
a while the income was split: a large share went to the teachers, the rest was de-
voted to carrying mortgaged buildings held by the trustees. These structures them-
selves were not infrequently erected in pursuance of business policy. Recent agita-
tion has forced increased expenditure on buildings and equipment. The schools

1 Anatomy, by a non-resident surgeon.

2 Physiology, pathology, and hygiene.

3 Anatomy and physiology.

* Likewise at University of Maryland, Valparaiso University, College of Physicians and Surgeons
(Chicago), Georgetown University, College of Physicians and Surgeons (Baltimore), Baylor Univer-
sity, College of Physicians and Surgeons (San Francisco), Barnes (St. Louis), Starling-Ohio, Univer-
sity of Texas, Toledo Medical College, Medical College of the State of South Carolina, Milwaukee
Medical College, College of Physicians and Surgeons (Boston), Wisconsin College of Physicians and
Surgeons. Even at Harvard, dental and medical students are mixed in some classes, though it is
admitted that "the Dentals don't do as well and are harder to teach." Students are admitted to the
Harvard Dental School on the basis of a four-year high school education. The discrepancy is there-
fore considerable.

5 The same is true at the University of Oregon (Portland), though in this case the laboratory is in the
medical college ; it is also the only real laboratory there.

« Physiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons (Chicago) ; pathology, Creighton ; chemistry, Balti-
more Medical College.

82 MEDICAL EDUCATION

have been willing enough to build; but in the matter of equipment they have usu-
ally yielded as little as they could. The conclusive evidence of lack of educational
conscience or pride is the general absence of a decent museum.1 Material, of course,
abounds, the expense involved is slight; but the practitioner simply will not take
the trouble. The College of Physicians and Surgeons (Baltimore), Georgetown Uni-
versity (Washington), Long Island College Hospital (Brooklyn), the medical depart-
ment of Valparaiso University, the Chicago Hahnemann, Ensworth (St. Joseph, Mis-
souri), are among the schools that have little or nothing in the way of a museum at
all. Such specimens as one meets are often putrid, rarely labeled properly, and still
more rarely catalogued. But a few exceptions may be fortunately noted : the great
anatomical and pathological museum at McGill has already been mentioned. To the
same class belong the excellent collections made by Souchon at Tulane and by Keiller
at Galveston (University of Texas). A small but beautifully mounted collection at
Boston University is once more an evidence of what conscience and intelligence will
achieve despite slender financial resources.

Practically the same may be said on the subject of books. The College of Physi-
cians and Surgeons of Chicago and the Medical College of Virginia have small work-
ing libraries; but in general no funds are set aside for the purchase of books. The
school grind is merrily independent of medical literature. The University of Mary-
land possesses indeed a large library under a separate roof, but the building was un-
heated when visited in midwinter, and at best it is open only two hours a day.
Denver and Gross (Denver, Colorado) and the Medico-Chirurgical College of Phila-
delphia have limited accumulations of textbooks and cheap medical periodicals;8
Long Island and Albany have no books at all. In the College of Physicians and Sur-
geons, Los Angeles, the word "Library" is prominently painted on a door which, on
being opened, reveals a class-room innocent of a single volume. Once more it is
pleasant to record exceptions: a good library, excellently administered, is to be
found at Jefferson, at Buffalo, and at Galveston.

In the matter of laboratory equipment and work, our progress may be facilitated
by simple elimination. None of these schools has laboratories of pharmacology; in
consequence, their teaching of materia medica and therapeutics is wholly on didactic
lines. Only a few of them — the Medico-Chirurgical (Philadelphia), University of
Maryland (Baltimore), the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago — are well
equipped to do either demonstrative or experimental work in physiology; as a rule,
physiology is still didactically presented with a varying amount of experimental
demonstration. The general laboratory equipment is therefore limited to chemistry,
anatomy, pathology, and bacteriology.

lThc Hahnemann (Philadelphia), University of Maryland (Baltimore), Oakland College of Medicine
and Surgery (California), each has a small museum.

•The former behind a counter in the business office, — practically inaccessible; the latter at the Col-
lege Club House.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 83

As a rule, chemistry advances little beyond the high school level; at the best,
elementary organic chemistry is included.1 The equipment is ordinary; there is no-
where the faintest evidence of independent scientific interest, nowhere any interplay
between the chemical and other laboratories. The ground covered satisfies the state
board prescription, enabling the student to pass the state board examination. No-
thing more is intended; the teaching is accordingly in large measure didactic and
quiz drill. It cannot be otherwise; for even in the cases where sufficient desk space
is provided, competent assistants are lacking. The instruction therefore quickly de-
teriorates into demonstration and drill.

The teaching of anatomy clings to thoroughly conventional lines. Embryology is
practically unknown; osteology is taught by lectures instead of by practical methods,
such as modeling, or the like; histology is relegated to pathology because the ana-
tomical department possesses no microscopes, in the first place, and because the
practitioner teacher rarely understands their use, in the second. The laboratory is a
mere dissecting-room, in which the student is required to dissect part of a cadaver
under the guidance of upper-class students or recent graduates. Into none of the
schools mentioned have modern ideas as to the conduct of this department per-
meated. Well conducted anatomical laboratories are in these days clean, attractive,
sweet-smelling places; the cadavers, neatly covered when not in use, are moist,
thoroughly well preserved, and not repulsive even to a layman. The dissecting-rooms
under discussion are rarely clean, always unattractive, and not infrequently unplea-
sant. They contain tables, cadavers, and a vat; usually nothing more. Not infre-
quently the school skeleton is defective, as at Creighton, the College of Physicians
and Surgeons, Milwaukee, and at the Kansas City Hahnemann. The models, charts,
cross-sections, bone-sets,2 drawings, microscopes, that complete the outfit of the modern
anatomist, are conspicuously absent. Large and financially prosperous schools, such
as the Medico-Chirurgical (Philadelphia), the University of Maryland (Baltimore),
in immediate proximity to institutions like the University of Pennsylvania and the
Johns Hopkins, where the subject is properly conducted, have profited nothing by
opportunities to modernize their teaching. Of course it could not be otherwise. The
professor is a busy physician or surgeon. He lectures to ill prepared students for
one hour a few times weekly, in a huge amphitheater, showing a bone between his

1 The Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadephia offers decidedly more. The instruction there occu-
pies part of three years and requires 544 hours of work. Nothing could better illustrate our conten-
tion that, with medical students on the high school or equivalent basis, anything like a thorough
treatment of the pre-medical sciences within the medical curriculum is fatal to the medical curriculum
itself. Chemistry here takes up over one-eighth of the entire medical curriculum. Of course physics and
biology deserve something too, though they get practically nothing. What would happen to the medi-
cal curriculum if a similar effort were made to teach them thoroughly? For the time being, the in-
struction limps along without them. When their necessity is generally recognized, as that of chemistry
is now recognized, it will be impossible to attempt them within the medical school, and the battle
for the preliminary scientific training will have been won.

2 At Cornell (Ithaca) a complete set of bones is given out to each student. There are over 100 com-
plete skeletons. This makes a striking contrast with numerous schools that do not possess a single
complete skeleton.

84 MEDICAL EDUCATION

finger-tips or eloquently describing an organ which no one but the prosector dis-
tinctly sees; at the close of which oratorical performance he snatches his hat and,
amid mingled applause and cat-calls, makes for his automobile to begin his round
of daily visits. In the afternoons "demonstrators" supervise the dissecting, where
eight or ten inexpert boys hack away at a cadaver until it is reduced to shreds. The
actual emphasis falls on the didactic teaching and the quiz-drills; something like
half the student's time is spent in the lecture-room: 220 out of 450 hours at Louis-
ville, 360 out of 684 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons (University of Illi-
nois), Chicago. The really effective work is not infrequently done by quiz-masters,
who drill hundreds of students in memorizing minute details which they would be
unable to recognize if the objects were before them. This is a flourishing industry
in "great medical centers" like Chicago1 and Philadelphia.

Pathology is practically in the same condition. The best of these schools are well
supplied with microscopes, microtomes, and material. But the teaching is usually
uninspired routine drill. Sections are cut, stained, mounted, and observed. At the
close of the year the student will perhaps have accumulated a box of several dozen
slides, which he may carry home with him. But the work has been largely histolo-
gical, — devoid of experimental features, on the one hand, and but feebly articulated
with clinic and autopsy, on the other. The autopsy is indeed the indispensable ad-
junct of an effective department of pathology. "A course in pathology without au-
topsy work and fresh material is like a course in systematic botany without field
work."2 The facilities of all but a few of our best schools are in this respect unduly
limited; at no other point is the lack of a hospital under school control more acutely
felt. Makeshifts of various kinds are invoked by way of remedy : in New York, for
example, Columbia and Cornell have attached the two coroner's physicians who serve
in the autopsy-room of the great Bellevue Hospital, thus procuring fresh material
from a large number of cases. The arrangement still leaves the professor of pathology
himself out of account. Of the schools belonging to the class under consideration few
have even fair opportunities of this character; some of them rely altogether on a
friendly coroner's cursory performance in the rear room of an undertaker's establish-
ment.3 The classes at the University of Maryland witness "perhaps ten [autopsies]
a year;"" the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore, describes its opportu-
nities as "restricted;" Georgetown University (Washington) gets a "few," Hahne-
mann (Chicago), "four or five a year;" at Northwestern they are "scanty, the stu-
dents do none;" at Cooper (San Francisco) they are scarce. For the most part, the
student has merely made the microscopic rounds of the typical abnormal growths;
his fundamental ignorance of biology, which no serious attempt is made to cure, comes

1 A Chicago drill-master is reported as having classes of 300.

1 Letter from Richard M. Pearce, professor of pathology. University and Bellevue Hospital Medical

College (New York University).

*e.g.. University of Oregon, Portland.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 85

between him and a really intelligent grasp of the principles and bearing of pathology.
One is not surprised to find the instruction once more heavily inclined to the didactic
side : 72 out of 144 hours at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago; 90 out
of 140 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore.1

Bacteriology — the last of the sciences concerning which there is even a pretense
— fares in general rather worse. At the Medico -Chirurgical of Philadelphia the sub-
ject is the best developed of all the scientific branches; elsewhere it is a mere tag to
pathology. Sterilizers, incubators, and culture- tubes are of course common enough;
this is the orthodox equipment, stipulated by the state boards. But the subject
cannot be intelligently studied without animals, — cats, rabbits, or guinea pigs. In
general, one finds no arrangements to care for animals either before or during exper-
imentation.2 As a rule, "they are too difficult to keep;" at Creighton, Oakland
(California), the Cleveland College of Physicians and Surgeons, the University of
Vermont, Georgetown University (Washington), they are "got as needed," — else-
where, often not even then. "I think I am not violating any confidence,"" says Dr. Victor
C. Vaughan,3 "when I say that there are certain men who teach bacteriology who
start at the beginning of their lectures with a lot of tubes already made. They
do not know enough about bacteriology to make cultures. They hold up these tubes
and say, 'This is a diphtheria culture; this is a culture of tubercle bacillus,' and if
by any chance a culture goes bad, they send and get another."

(3) There yet remains for our consideration the third variety of school on the high
school or equivalent basis, namely, those described as basely mercenary. In point
of equipment and teaching methods these schools are not substantially different from
institutions on a still lower basis.4 Some of the latter institutions show, indeed, a
better spirit : the University of Alabama, at Mobile, the College of Physicians and
Surgeons and the School of Medicine, at Atlanta, the Medical College of the State
of South Carolina, at Charleston, are not without traditions and a certain present
dignity. Educationally, however, subject to certain exceptions to be specified from
time to time, they may without violence be considered together; for limitations of
one kind or another — now of equipment, now of intention, again of both — make
the effective teaching of any of the laboratory sciences frankly impossible. They are
for the most part cramming establishments, in many of which it is freely admitted
that the students do not even own the regular textbooks. Their main weapon is the
quiz-compend. Such laboratories as they have cannot be effectively used; of teaching
accessories — books, museum, modern charts, or models — they are generally devoid.

1 At the Johns Hopkins, out of a total of 400 hours, 40 are didactic ; at Minnesota, out of 456, 146;
at Wake Forest, out of 195, 50.

2 The College of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore, operates a Pasteur plant, but animals are only
slightly used in teaching.

8 Third Annual Conference, Council on American Medical Education, American Medical Attociation,

held in Chicago, April 29, 1907, p. 59.

4 Those in the south and elsewhere asking two years of a high school, or less.

86 MEDICAL EDUCATION

It is indeed stretching terms to speak of laboratory teaching in connection with
them at all.1 It is hardly more than make-believe; in the better schools, a futile imi-
tation, without actual bearing on the subsequent clinical work ; in others, a grudg-
ing compliance with the state board behest; occasionally there is nothing at all.
The Mississippi Medical College (Meridian) did not, when visited,8 own a dollar's
worth of apparatus of any description whatsoever; the pathological laboratories of
the Chattanooga Medical College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, San
Francisco, rejoice in the possession of one microscope apiece; Halifax Medical Col-
lege provides one utterly wretched laboratory for bacteriology and pathology ; the
Toledo school has a meager equipment in one or two branches, but for the rest is
bare; the Detroit Homeopathic College has a dirty and disorderly room, with a few
dozen wet specimens, that is called the pathological laboratory; at the Milwaukee
Medical College, bacteriology is represented mainly by several wire baskets of dirty
test tubes; Temple University (Philadelphia) has no individual outfit for students
in any science at all; the Chicago National Medical University is practically as bare
as the Meridian school ; the eclectic school at Lincoln, Nebraska, pretends to give
clinical instruction in Lincoln, laboratory instruction at Cotner University, a few
miles from town. When questions are asked in Lincoln regarding physiology or pa-
thology, the answer is made: "That is given at Cotner ;" when the same question is
asked at Cotner, it is answered: "That is given at Lincoln." A quick transit from
one to the other failed to find anything at either. Prestidigitation is, however, fa-
miliar enough in schools of this grade. Entrance credentials in the college safe fre-
quently vanish as it is being opened : why should not equipment similarly resent in-
spection? At the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Denver, the outfit in pathology
and bacteriology was mostly stored in a certain compartment under a table. There
was some difficulty and delay in opening it; by the time the key was found, every-
thing had disappeared except an empty demijohn and some jugs, obviously too
clumsy to whisk themselves away in such airy fashion. At Willamette University
(Salem, Oregon) "physiology is taught experimentally." The apparatus? "That is
kept in a physician's office downtown." At the Eclectic Medical College of New
York an inquiry was made as to the teaching of experimental physiology, no outfit
for which had been noticed in the course of the inspection. A mere oversight! A mes-
senger was despatched to fetch it, and did — a single small black box, of about the
size and appearance of a safety-razor case, containing a small sphygmograph. "Good
standing" requires the schools of St. Louis and Chicago to own a certain equipment
in experimental physiology. They do; it is displayed prominently on tables, brand-
new, like samples shown for sale on a counter ; the various parts had never been put
together or connected at the College of Physicians and Surgeons or at the Hippo-

l«.y.t Western University (London, Ont.), Halifax Medical College, University of Arkansas, South-
western University (Dallas, Texas), Fort Worth University, Epworth University (Oklahoma City).
Other examples are given in the text.

* January 12, 1909. It was then in its third year.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 87

cratean, both of St. Louis, at the Western Eclectic (Kansas City), or at the College
of Physicians and Surgeons (Denver). The Littlejohn School of Osteopathy (Chicago)
was in the throes of rebuilding to accommodate the growing classes that seek its su-
perior advantages: every "laboratory" but that of chemistry was dismantled; there
was no prospect that they could be again set up for months, but the teaching of
"science" went on just the same.1

Chemistry is the "star" laboratory course of these schools — "medical chemistry,"
of course. It never rises above a fair high school level and often falls far below it. At
Chattanooga the students could not follow the subject, however simply presented.
The laboratories are of the most elementary description, — sometimes active and in
good order, as at Mobile and Augusta, at the Illinois Medical College, and at the
Eclectic Medical College of New York ; oftener in utter disorder, as at the Maryland
Medical College (Baltimore). At the University of Oregon (Portland) and Willamette
(Salem, Oregon) there is no running water at the desks ; at the North Carolina Medi-
cal College (Charlotte) a single set of reagents is provided for the entire class; at the
University Medical College, Kansas City (Missouri), instead of individual reagent
sets, huge bottles are provided for general use.

Almost, but not quite all the schools dissect. At Meridian (Mississippi), for example,
anatomical material is too difficult to get. In Chicago they have learned how to teach
anatomy practically without dissection. At the National Medical University the
teacher dictates, the students learn ; this process is kept on, night after night, from
October until the middle of April. So far there had been no dissection at all, but there
would be ultimately, in "May or June," though there were no cadavers at hand as yet.
At the Jenner Medical College — also aChicago night school — a similarly enlightened
pedagogy was employed: "the subject is taught by lectures, with dissection from
May 15 until the close of the session." The same methods are practised at Pulte —
the Cincinnati homeopathic school — where dissection had not yet begun on Decem-
ber 14: "the anatomy teaching goes on independent of dissecting." At Kirksville,
Missouri, in the American School of Osteopathy, anatomy is taught with a textbook
the first year; lectures, demonstrating, and dissecting are postponed to the second
year, — and the whole course takes but three years, all told. The Central College of
Osteopathy, Kansas City, Missouri, holds that the student should know anatomy be-
fore he dissects: "he will get more out of it." On November 8 there was no cadaver
in the school: they already had had one and "will get another in February." At the
Bennett Medical College, Chicago, there was witnessed a quiz in anatomy in a room
without a skeleton, bone, or chart. At the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Den-
ver, it was impossible to find any evidence of active dissecting; and it was admitted
that material was scarce: "there had been two bodies this year, ten men on each."

1 These schools are generally quite devoid of teaching aids,— charts, modern models, etc. The rooms
are bare. What they have is out of reach of the students : "if it were not locked up, it would disap-
pear,"— a significant indication of the sort of students gathered in by low standards.

88 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Elsewhere, dissecting-rooms are indeed found, but the conditions in them defy de-
scription. The smell is intolerable ; the cadavers now putrid, as at Temple University
(Philadelphia), the Philadelphia College of Osteopathy, the Halifax Medical School,
and in many 'of the southern schools,1 including Vanderbilt; again, dry as tanned leather,
— at the University of Tennessee, Bennett (Chicago), Denver and Gross (Denver),
Creighton (Omaha), College of Physicians and Surgeons, St. Louis, for example. At the
Barnes Medical College (St. Louis) the first-year students listen to lectures only in the
last "semestry ;" they are not permitted to dissect because first-year men only "hack
and butcher." The dissecting-room of the Kansas Medical College, Topeka (the medical
department of Washburn College), did duty incidentally as a chicken yard: corn was
scattered over the floor — along with other things — and poultry fed placidly in the
long intervals before instruction in anatomy began.

A few of these schools have the apparatus requisite to teach pathology and bac-
teriology in routine fashion: the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, for
one. But in general they own an inadequate and at times decreasing supply of micro-
scopes— for every where one hears theft assigned in extenuation of a short supply or
defective instruments. Post-mortems are practically nil. None are claimed at Chatta-
nooga, Atlanta, Charlotte (North Carolina), or Dallas (Baylor and Southwestern Uni-
versities) ; two in six years were remembered at the medical department of the Univer-
sity of Georgia (Augusta). In default of post-mortems, material is sometimes obtained
from the surgeons; but not all the schools can even then prepare it properly. To cut
matters short, hardened material and sometimes sections are bought "in the east." The
student at most stains and mounts them. Too frequently he does no more than look
at them through the microscope. Whether he sees anything, remains a problem; for
he rarely makes a drawing. In many cases it is impossible to believe that even this
is done. At the College of Physicians and Surgeons, St. Louis, individual lockers are
provided; on examination they prove to be empty. An explanation is offered: "the
boys bring slides and cover-glasses along; they furnish their own and keep them at
home."

It is, of course, not to be supposed that these schools would be materially better
even if well equipped and decently cared for. It makes very little difference to the
student body that they assemble whether microscopes and incubators are provided
or not. The poor fellow who in an unguarded moment is caught by advertisements,
premiums, or canvassing agents2 cannot be taught modern medicine, no matter what
investments in apparatus the state boards force. Meanwhile the sole beneficiaries of
the traffic are the teachers — as a rule, the small group that constitutes the "faculty ;"
in some instances, however, only the dean, who "owns" or "runs" the school. His
associates profit indirectly by what is technically known as the " reflex." Their pro-

1 An exception must be recorded in favor of the Memphis College of Physicians and Surgeons, where
excellent rooms with hot and cold water are provided.

1 Employed at Jefferson Park College, feeder to the Bennett Medical College, Chicago.

THE LABORATORY BRANCHES 89

fessorial dignity impresses the crude boys who will be likely to require with their
first cases the aid of a "consultant." The "dean" of one such institution was frankly
explaining his methods. "What do you give your teachers?" he was asked. "Titles,"
he replied.

The less obviously commercial schools allege not infrequently that medical edu-
cation no longer pays, that it is kept up for the sake of the "back districts." We
have already shown that the back districts deserve and can get something better.
Meanwhile the statement does not persuade. Hundreds of thousands of dollars an-
nually pour into these institutions; in many cases, this has been going on for years.
What becomes of the money? There is in general nothing to show for it; a few
hundred dollars would replace the fixtures and equipment of most of them.1

The discreditable showing made by our commercial medical schools must not,
however, be permitted to obscure the fact that we have at this date perhaps thirty
institutions well equipped to teach the medical sciences in laboratories usually of
modern construction, invariably of modern equipment. Twenty years ago we had not
one. Our immediate problem has therefore two aspects : on the one hand, to strengthen
these institutions, increasing their number only as actual need requires; on the
other, with all the force that law and public opinion can wield to crush out the
mercenary concerns that trade on ignorance and disease.

*In a few places there is a considerable investment: Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons,
Atlanta School of Medicine, the two Richmond schools, for example. See for detailed discussion,
chapter viii.

COMPARATIVE SCHEDULE, FIRST AND SECOND YEARS
SHOWING BEARING OF ENTRANCE REQUIREMENT ON CURRICULUM*

FIRST YKAR

WETTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
Si weeks per year
(College basis)

NEW YORE UNIVERSITY
32 weeks per year
(Four-year high school basis)

M miri i I'll lit i RI ;u- AI. COLLEGE

82 weeks per year
(High school equivalent basis)

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA
28 weeks per year
(Nominal requirement)

Anatomy

Did.

Lab.

Anatomy

Hrs.

Anatomy

Hrs.

Anatomy

Hrs.

Comparative anatomy

24

48

Lectures & recitations

96

Lectures

96

Lectures

56

Descriptive anatomy

84

Demonstrations

96

Demonstrations

96

Recitations

66

Splanchnology

32

Practical work

360

Recitations

32

Comparative osteology

120

Neurology

7 ' **

Histology and Embryo-

Dissections

98-144

Practical anatomy '

144

Dissections

216

logy

Histology and Embryo-

(all practical)

Microscopical tech-

Laboratory work

128

logy

Inorganic Chemistry

nique

16

Lectures and recita-

Didactic

64

Chemical physics

112

Histology

24

32

tions

64

Laboratory

96

Chemical laboratory

168

Microscopical anatomy

40

80

Physiology

Physiology

Physiology

Embryology

40

80

Lectures

48

Didactic

96

(none in first year)

Physiology and Bio-che-
mistry
Experimental physio-
logy
Bio-chemistry
Organic chemistry

16
16
64

64
64
112

Recitations
Chemistry and Physics
Lectures
Inorganic chemis-")
try(%) 1
Organic chemistry j

32

96

Laboratory
Chemistry
Didactic
Laboratory
General Pathology
Didactic

128

160
96

64

Physiological Chemistry
(part practical)
Biology, Embryology. <£
Histology
Laboratory work
Pharmacy

22

196

Recitations

32

Hygiene

Didactic

28

Laboratory work

112

Lectures

32

Bacteriology

Recitations

?

Practical work

64

Materia Medica

Lectures

64

Recitations

?

Pharmacy

.Vote page X says :
For freshmen

Lectures
Laboratory
Recitations

32

64

1 2 to 5 p.m., 6 days per week,
for 8 weeks.

Total lecture* 138 hrs.
Total recitations 6i hrs.

Bandaging and Surgical

Hours figured out from an-
nouncement and the class

Total laboratory

Dressings

schedule. See inspection re-

work 112 hrs.

Practical

32

port.

SECOND YEAR

WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL COLLEGE

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

Anatomy

Did.

Lab.

Anatomy

Hrs.

Anatomy

Hrs.

Anatomy

Hrs.

Descriptive anatomy

84

Lectures and recita-

Lectures

96

Lectures

56

Dissections

144

tions

96

Demonstrations

64

Recitations

56

Applied anatomy

64

Demonstrations

64

Recitations

32

Practical anatomy *

144

Physiology and Bio-che-

Practical work

360

Dissections

216

Chemistry

mistry

Physiology

Physiology

Lectures

56

Advanced experimen-
tal physiology

Advanced bio-chemis-

§•«

6

106

Lectures and recita-
tions
Practical work

96
96

Lectures
Recitations
Demonstrations

64
48

Physiology
Lectures and demon-
strations

86

try
Lectures and recita-
tions
Pathology and Preven-
tive Medicine

72

32

Chemistry
Lectures
Organic chemistry "j
Physiological chem- '

iatrv

48

Laboratory
Chemistry
Didactic
Laboratory

48

48
128

Laboratory work *
Materia Medica
Lectures*
Histology

64
28

Bacteriology

40

82

IBI.I y

Toxicology ^

General Pathology

Lectures

14

Protoioology

14

28

Recitations

16

Lectures

64

Laboratory

112

General pathology and
pathological histolo-
gy
Gross pathological ana-
tomy

76

145
32

Laboratory work
Materia Medica and
Pharmacology
Lectures

96
64

Laboratory
Bctcteriology
Laboratory
Hygiene

192
96

Bacteriology
Lectures
Laboratory

11
88

Pharmacology. Materia
Medica <t Therapeutics

Recitations
Laboratory work

32
63

Didactic
Laboratory

64
16

Pharmacology, toxico-

Pathology

Pharmacology and

logy, and prescription

Lectures

16

Therapeutics

wnting

19

88

Recitations

16

Didactic

96

Experimental pharma-

Laboratory work

128

Physical Diagnosis: Nor-

codynamics
Systematic pharmaco-
logy
Physical Diagnosis

24
12

60

6
24

Lantern demonstration
Elementary Clinic
Physical diagnosis

16
30

mal
Practical
Physical Diagnosis: Pa-
thological

64

Minor Surgery and Ban-
daging

30

Practical work

Ptinix

16

Lectures
Demonstrations

82

Surgical Recitations

60

Lrlllllt.

32

General Etiology and

Symptomatology

Lectures

32

Surgical Pathology
Didactic

16

1 S to 6 p.m., 6 days per week,
for 8 weeks.

Laboratory

82

> 8 weeks of 8 hours per week

Surgical Fevers and In-

(i periods per week).

flammations

» Only one hour (lecture) per

Lectures

16

week. See schedule.

* Creditable representatives have been selected in each instance.

CHAPTER VI

THE COURSE OF STUDY
THE HOSPITAL AND THE MEDICAL SCHOOL

THE THIRD AND FOURTH YEARS (A)

LET us make an inventory of the presumptive acquirements of the well trained medi-
cal student at the threshold of his third year. He knows the normal structure of the
human body, the normal composition of the bodily fluids, the normal functioning
of tissues and organs, the physiological action of ordinary drugs, the main depar-
tures from normal structure, and in a limited fashion the significance of such de-
partures both to the organs and tissues immediately involved and to the general
economy of the organism. He will have had his first lessons in physical diagnosis,
learning, perhaps in the class-room through examination of his fellow students, the
use of the stethoscope, the arts of palpation, auscultation, and percussion, accus-
toming his ear to the normal sounds, his fingers to the normal "feel," of the chest
and abdomen in health. His studies in pathology will have introduced him further
to the essential clinical terminology, obviating the necessity of a separate detached
course in "elementary medicine."1

It remains, then, in the first place to teach the student how to get from the di-
rect study of the patient himself whatsoever data remain to be collected. He will
then possess two sets of facts : one in a way indirectly obtained, through microscopic
or other study of excretions, secretions, tissues, etc. ; the other set procured directly
at the bedside. He must learn the art of combining them ; he must see them together
as the total picture of the situation with which he is called on to deal. Upon this
inductive process all intelligent therapeutic procedure is based : hence his final task
— to learn through an extension of the elementary discipline that began in the phar-
macological laboratory, the therapeutic measures calculated to meet the more or less
precisely ascertained and inferred conditions, responsible for the disturbance he is
trying to quell.

A somewhat absurd controversy has at times raged as to which is of the higher
scientific quality or diagnostic value — the laboratory disclosures or the bedside ob-
servations. Occasionally champions of the laboratory prejudge the issue by calling
pathology a real or pure or more or less accurate science, as against the presumably
unreal or impure or inaccurate data secured from the patient himself. It becomes

1The place of pathology in the American medical curriculum — if the instruction takes advantage of
it — saves us from the difficulty encountered in Germany, where pathology and clinical medicine be-
gin together. "According to current use the study of general pathology and pathological anatomy
begin simultaneously with attendance on the clinic. For that reason the first semester of the clinic is
of very slight value. . . . We ought first to procure for the student clear pathological conceptions ;
only then will it be easy for him to follow the clinical instruction intelligently and profitably. I con-
sider it absolutely necessary that the instruction in general pathology and pathological anatomy
should precede the clinic." Von Striimpell, loc. cit., pp. 16, 17.

92 MEDICAL EDUCATION

a serious question of professional etiquette, who should speak first or loudest, — the
pathologist, armed with his microscope, or the clinician, brandishing his stetho-
scope. To parallel the dispute, one must go back to the two knights who, meeting
at a cross-road, disputed at the hazard of their lives as to the color of a shield which,
as neither had stopped to reflect, had two sides. It is as profitable to discuss which
was the right side of the shield as to raise the question of precedence between the
laboratory and the bedside. Both supply indispensable data of coordinate impor-
tance. The central fact may be disclosed now by one, now by the other, but in either
case it must be interpreted in the light of all other pertinent facts in hand. The
scientific character of the procedure depends not on where or by what means facts
are procured, but altogether on the degree of caution and thoroughness with which
observations are made, inferences drawn, and results heeded. The essence of science
is method, — the painstaking collection of all relevant data, the severe effort to read
their significance in connection. These objects are promoted in some directions by
the laboratory appliances that eke out our defective senses; even so, however, we do
not escape or rise superior to these same senses; for with them we use the imple-
ments in question. Whatsoever, then, the senses actually ascertain, pertinent to the
matter in hand, is scientific datum. The way to be unscientific is to be partial, —
whether to the laboratory or to the hospital, it matters not. The test of a good
education in medicine is the thorough interpenetration of both standpoints in their
product, the young graduate.

If, then, a laboratory is a place constructed for the express purpose of facilitating
the collection of data bearing on definite problems and the initiation of practical
measures looking to their solution, the hospital and the dispensary are laboratories
in the strictest sense of the term. And just as it makes no difference to science
whether usable data be obtained from a slide beneath a microscope or from a sick
man stretched out on a cot, so the precise nature of the act or experiment is equally
immaterial: it matters not in the slightest, from the standpoint of scientific logic,
whether the step take the form of administering a dose of calomel, operating for ap-
pendicitis, or stimulating a particular convolution of a frog's brain with an electric
current. The logical position is in all three cases identical. In each a supposition, —
whether expressed or implied, whether called theory or diagnosis, — based on suppos-
edly adequate observation, submits itself to the test of an experiment. If proper
weight has been given to correct and sufficient facts, the experiment wins ; otherwise
not, and a second effort, profiting by previous failure, is demanded. The practising
physician and the "theoretical" scientist are thus engaged in doing the same sort of
thing, even while one is seeking to correct Mr. Smith's digestive aberration and the
other to localize the cerebral functions of the frog.

Certain conclusions as to clinical teaching follow. The student is to collect and
evaluate facts. The facts are locked up in the patient. To the patient, therefore, he must
go. Waiving the personal factor, always important, that method of clinical teaching

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 93

will be excellent which brings the student into close and active relation with the
patient: close, by removing all hindrance to immediate investigation; active, in the
sense, not merely of offering opportunities, but of imposing responsibilities.

Clinical teaching has had substantially the same history as anatomical teaching.
It was first didactic : the student was told what he would find and what he should do
when he found it.1 It was next demonstrative: things were pointed out in the amphi-
theater or the wards, those who got the front seats8 seeing them more or less well.
Latterly it has become scientific: the student brings his own faculties into play at
close range, — gathering his own data, making his own construction, proposing his
own course, and taking the consequences when the instructor who has worked through
exactly the same process calls him to account: the instructor, no longer a fountain
pouring forth a full stream of knowledge, nor a showman exhibiting marvelous
sights, but by turns an aid or an antagonist in a strenuous contest with disease.

The backbone of the structure is the clinic in internal medicine.3 This central fact
cannot in America be too strongly emphasized. The sufficiency of the school's clinical
resources depends at bottom on its medical clinic; the value of its training depends
on the systematic thoroughness with which it is in position to use an adequate sup-
ply of medical cases. To sample a school on its clinical side, one makes in the first
place straight for its medical clinic, seeking to learn the number of patients available
for teaching, the variety of conditions which they illustrate, and the hospital regu-

1The reader must not suppose, however, that this method of teaching or practising medicine is ex-
tinct. The following is quoted from the Chicago Night University Bulletin, vol. iii., no. 24, p. 169 :

"A young married man, wife and babe recently returned from Arkansas. They were all loaded
with so-called malaria. . . . The old mother came in to tell me of the cases and get some 'chill medi-
cine.' She said they were all chilling three times a day. ... I sent the little tot ipecac 1M. She said
the mother chilled every morning about ten o'clock, and that during the chill she had a very severe
cough which hurt her right side. ... I sent the mother bryonia 200. She said the husband and father
chilled at various times. Great thirst during fever, severe cough before and during the chill, with
drenching sweat following the fever. I sent nim rhus tox, 75M. The prescriptions proved to be rifle-
shots for the mother and babe, for they never chilled again ; but only a glancing shot for the husband.
He missed his chill for a few days, when it returned with new symptoms and more severe and with
which no medicine seemed to correspond. I saw him then personally. Found he still had cough during
chill, but not before; that he wanted to be covered during fever just the same as during the chill,
like nux v. and rhus t. ; he had other symptoms which ruled these out. After tearching several hours
with repertory in hand, 1 decided that this was a mixed case and agreed with no medicine in the book.
Hence, following Hahnemann's advice, I gave him cinchona (1M) to clear up his case. After twenty-
four hours he chilled again. This time the most peculiar thing noticed was that he was very thirsty
during the chill, but in no other stage. He drank large quantities, but during the heat and sweat, not
a drop. Also that during the chill the coldness was relieved by the heat of a hot stove. He wanted to
get near the hot stove. Remembering . . . that for a chill with thirst for large drinks of cold water,
and no thirst in any other stage, ignatia stands alone, I gave him ignatia 1M. to be taken every two
hours until he missed his chill — then to be discontinued. Well, he missed the next chill and also every
one which has been due him from that day to this."

8 This method, too, survives in both medical and surgical clinics. It is in process of abandonment in
medical teaching, just as rapidly as proper arrangements for ward and bedside work can be made.
But it is still favored by surgeons, despite its very slight practical value.

3 "For clinical studies proper, internal medicine forms the center at German universities. Medical
education there follows the principle that medicine is a scientific whole ; ... all its varied disciplines
must play upon each other ; and from this point of view internal medicine is regarded as the mother
of all other clinical divisions." W. Lexis, Das Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich, vol. i. pp. 138,
139 (Berlin, 1904).

94 MEDICAL EDUCATION

lations in so far, at least, as they determine (1) continuity of service on the part of
the teachers of medicine, (2) the closeness with which the student may follow the
progress of individual patients, and (3) the access of the student to the clinical labora-
tory. It matters much less what else a school has by way of clinical opportunity if it
has this, though, of course, the school that has it will have whatever else it needs too.
The main point is that there is no substitute for a good clinic in internal medicine;
the school sampled and found wanting there suffers from a fatal organic lesion. Ex-
cellent didactic instruction is no compensation ; successful passing of written state
board or other examinations is no proof that the school has managed to do without.
A large surgical service with amphitheater operations every day in the week, a dispen-
sary crowded with eye, ear, and throat cases, — these are all very well in their way.
But one comes back to the medical clinic: that is the really important item. Until
practical state board examinations can be trusted to disclose defective school facili-
ties on the clinical side, it is thrice important to scrutinize carefully the situation
of every medical school in this respect. For proper provision rests at this moment
on the conscientiousness and intelligence of medical educators. Thus far the states
have not adopted an examination procedure that will destroy schools not able to do
their duty in regard to the medical clinic.

The student's clinical work is classified under four heads: (1) medicine, in which
pediatrics and infectious diseases may be included, (2) surgery, (3) obstetrics, (4) the
specialties, such as diseases of the eye, ear, skin, etc. A teaching hospital consists
essentially of a series of wards, accommodating patients belonging to these several
departments, each ward systematically organized with a permanent staff; of a clinical
laboratory, similarly organized and in close organic relation with the wards; and of
an autopsy-room. The clinical laboratory of the hospital is not the same as the
pathological laboratory of the medical school. "A clinic of medicine needs a labora-\
tory equipped with apparatus for chemical, physiological, pathological, and bacterio-
logical work, not so completely equipped as is the laboratory of these respective
departments in the medical school, but specially equipped for certain needs of the
work."1 On the value of the data thus obtainable it is unnecessary longer to dwell.
The clinical laboratory is the connecting link between the two parts of the medical
school ; and it must be immediately accessible. The clinical teacher cannot stop for
data that he must perhaps cross town to get; the student responsible for a parti-
cular case will not include in the facts on the basis of which he is making up his
mind the results of an examination of blood, sputum, and feces, if these must be
transported for study much beyond the hospital walls. Nor will the interne or the
young practitioner require the knowledge in question before coming to a conclusion,
unless he has formed at school the habit of so doing.* In this laboratory a theoreti-

1 Henry A. Christian: "The Clinical Laboratory," in Columbia Unwernty Quarterly, vol. xi., no 3,
p. 339.

' "We see the necessity of laboratories with room for each clinical student, each with his work-place

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 95

cal course in clinical microscopy will precede the period when the student is speci-
fically charged with responsibility for the laboratory facts in his own "cases," shortly
to be described. Of equally essential importance to the rounding out of the medical
curriculum is the autopsy -room, where the wise are brought to book. "Successful
knowledge of the infinite Variations of disease can only be obtained by a prolonged
study of morbid anatomy. While of special value in training the physician in diag-
nosis, it also enables him to correct his mistakes, and if he reads its lessons aright,
it may serve to keep him humble."1

The teaching dispensary follows the same lines as the teaching hospital in respect
to both organization and equipment, and must be constructed with its pedagogical
use in view. It consists essentially of a commodious receiving-room, leading from
which are separate rooms, sufficiently large, clean, well lighted, each assigned to a
separate department. The several rooms are appropriately equipped with instruments,
apparatus, etc., and with a recording system which enables the workers to keep track
of each patient and to collate readily all cases of the same general character. Each
department must have an organized teaching staff; the receiving-room must be in
charge of a physician, who will assign patients to the departments to which they
severally belong. The clinical laboratory must be at hand so that the necessary mi-
croscopical examinations can be made without loss of time.

From the teaching point of view, the hospital and the dispensary differ in certain
respects; certain classes of cases do not usually enter the hospital wards at all: minor
surgery, trivial medical ailments, numerous afflictions involving eye, ear, nose, throat,
skin, etc. Ambulatory patients are also under less satisfactory control ; a large propor-
tion never come a second time. The dispensary is therefore excellently adapted to show
a large variety of conditions; it is a relatively poor place to watch their development.
In the dispensary the student can become expert in initial physical examination;
but only the hospital wards enable him to study progress, to observe nature's com-
ment on therapeutic moves. The dispensary corresponds to the "office hour," — so
important an item in the physician's early progress; the hospital ward represents the
sick-room. Clearly, a huge dispensary does not wholly offset a defective hospital.

Between dispensary and hospital, clinical instruction in the third and fourth years
is variously apportioned.2 But apportioned they must be ; for the mingling of third

properly equipped. In building this well arranged laboratory the university has by no means erected
something superfluous. ... It has simply met a positive need. In putting the laboratories in such in-
timate relations with the hospital, and especially with the dispensaries, it has provided means for an im-
mense increase of its facilities. It is a place for practice, for doing as an undergraduate the things that
must be done afterward in carrying on the profession of medicine." George Dock, "Address at Open-
ing of Clinical Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital,' University of Pennsylvania
Medical Bulletin, Aug., 1909 (slightly abridged).
1 Osier, loc. cit., p. 144.

8 Taking a four-year curriculum of 4100 hours as a basis, the pattern curriculum worked out by
the Council on Education of the American Medical Association allowed 1970 hours to anatomy, phy-
siology, physiological chemistry, pathology, bacteriology, pharmacology, toxicology, and therapeutics,
— or, in other words, the scientific subjects included in the first two years. Clinical instruction gets
2130 hours, distributed as follows:

96 MEDICAL EDUCATION

and fourth year students in clinical work is severely reprehensible, — an infallible in-
dication of deficient clinical material, imperfect teaching organization, or of both.
As for the rest, there can be no fixed rule. Important, mainly, is it that the student
be brought into immediate and increasingly responsible contact with the disordered
machine.

Let us consider briefly the dispensary first. The classes are divided into small
rotating sections, each with regular appointments in every one of the dispensary
departments. The sections, in charge of separate instructors, should not contain more
than ten students apiece — rather fewer would be even better. The student is trained
at once to take the patient's history, to make the physical examination, to examine
blood, sputum, etc., and on the basis of all the facts thus amassed to make a diag-
nosis and suggest a course of treatment. The instructor stands by, to correct and to
stimulate by question, criticism, or suggestion. Everything is a matter of record,
and the student's work is thus part of, in a sense the basis of, the complete dispen-
sary records. In the surgical out-patient department, bandaging, stitching up a wound,
administering anesthetics, quickly fall to his lot. Schools favorably located in large
cities are able to develop considerable out-patient obstetrical work. Thus the student
not only amplifies his experience, but learns to combat the conditions under which
he will subsequently be called upon to work. He should, of course, in justice to his
charge, be accompanied by an instructor, though in the weaker schools this is by no
means always arranged. Even so, however, out-patient obstetrical work, though an
experience, is not a discipline: it does not dispense with the necessity of careful
training in method under ideal hospital conditions. The young physician will never
learn technique and the importance of technique properly except in the maternity
hospital; having learned them there, his problem in practice is to secure the essen-
tials even amidst the most unpromising environment. In certain of the specialties —
dermatology, ophthalmology — the bulk of the direct instruction received is in the
dispensary service. To some extent, of course, the conditions observed in them come
under repeated observation in the medical clinics of both third and fourth years ;
full mastery of a specialty belongs of course to the postgraduate years. But the stu-
dent must be sufficiently at home to help himself in emergencies and to know when
and whence to seek further assistance.

The fourth year is spent in the hospital under precisely the same conditions. The
class is again broken up into small groups. Each student gets by assignment a suc-
cession of cases, for a full report upon each of which he is responsible; he must
take the history, conduct the physical examination, do the microscopical and other
clinical laboratory work, propound a diagnosis, suggest the treatment. For this

Medicine (including clinical pathology and pediatrics), 800 hours
Surgery OM "

Obstetrics and gynecology 240 '

DiMMM of the eye, ear, nose, and throat 140 *

Dermatology and syphilis 00 *

Hygiene and medical jurisprudence 120 "

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 97

purpose he has easy access to the hospital wards. His "beds" are under his con-
tinuous observation from the day his "patient" is admitted until the day of dis-
charge; or, in the event of death, he and the physician ultimately responsible for
the steps taken in treatment repair with others to the autopsy-room to bring their
knowledge to the test, as Thomas Bond quaintly phrased it. Meanwhile, the clinical
teaching has closely followed the development of the case. At brief and regular
intervals its status is reviewed. All other members of his group, and the patient
too, are at hand when the student presents his report, which forms, once more,
part of the permanent record of the case. At every point he has been checked up;
the instructor in charge of the clinical laboratory inspects and verifies his work
there; the clinical instructor, here. The latter officer reviews everything, pointing
out omissions, errors, misinterpretation. The student has always an appeal. He may
on second trial convince himself of his blunder. He may, however, be only the more
convinced he was right, whereupon another look may persuade the instructor that
it is he who errs ! Subject to this control, complete, of course, from the standpoint
of treatment followed, the student is a physician practising the technique which, it
is to be hoped, may become his fixed professional habit ; learning through experience,
as indeed he will continue to learn, long after he has left school, — a controlled,
systematized, criticized experience, however, not the blundering, helpless ** experi-
ence" upon which the didactically or demonstratively taught student of medicine
has hitherto relied for a slow and costly initiation into the art of medicine.

In the surgical ward, a similar arrangement is feasible. The student assists in the
operation of his own "case" and follows the after-treatment. Obstetrical training
pursues analogous lines. After preliminary drill with the manikin, the student first
assists, then has charge under an instructor, of the cases in question. He learns
in the hospital wards the proper care and manipulations, his experience supple-
mented, as we have pointed out, by a regularly organized out-patient department,
which brings him in the home, in contact with the trying conditions that he will
encounter in practice. Pediatrics and infectious diseases are likewise scheduled and
organized. A simple method of rotation carries the student in this intimate and
responsible fashion through all departments in the course of two years.

Demonstrative teaching necessarily accompanies the method described: in each
group of five, only one student personally explores each case.1 At the next bed a new
protagonist comes to the front ; and so on, until each man has had his turn. Always,
then, four of the five men are getting demonstrative teaching, though of a somewhat
intimate kind. The demonstrative method must, for lack of time, also be more widely
employed : large sections are sent on ward rounds, in the course of which the instruc-
tor demonstrates the salient features of a considerable number and variety of cases.
The defects of the method are manifest: it is not sufficiently direct, accountable, and
systematic to constitute the sole lasting discipline. At best, the student becomes in
1 In some schools two students have charge of each case, the principle remaining the same.

98 MEDICAL EDUCATION

this way familiar with conditions singly and in their combination and interconnec-
tion. He gets cross-sections of disease — a most important experience, but, once more,
not the same thing as the continuous observation of the developing disease process
and the influence thereon from day to day of whatever therapeutic procedure is
adopted. In the same way, an instructor in physics might take his students through
a large laboratory, showing them how electrical attraction or some other single factor
produces a particular type of effect in each of a dozen different experiments, — a most
valuable method to impress upon them the specific tendency or effect of the force
under discussion ; but no substitute for experiments performed by the student him-
self from beginning to end, in which electrical attraction and much besides come into
play. Under any but the most vigorous teaching, the demonstrative method may
fail to stimulate sufficiently: the student looks and listens, — a passive attitude that
may relapse into something more deeply negative. Finally, the ease with which an
expert passes from case to case, the necessity of confining attention to decisive fea-
tures which he selects, may, if not elsewhere corrected, tend to encourage the super-
ficial examination and the hasty conclusions with which current practice may be
justly reproached. Outside the wards there is a narrowly limited use for demonstra-
tive instruction in the class-room or small amphitheater, where groups of cases can
conveniently be shown ; but the value of demonstration increases apace, as it ap-
proaches the intimacy of the individual experiment. Remoteness is quickly fatal.
"The larger the circle of listeners, the more difficult for the teacher to hold the in-
terest of them all; as soon as those sitting some distance off no longer see and hear
exactly what is to be seen and heard, their thoughts run wild, they lose the logical
thread of the diagnostic process.'11 This is especially true of spectacular amphitheater
surgery, which is of meager educational value, though as a rule prominently exploited.

Other methods have their uses also; even the didactic lecture may not perhaps be
wholly dispensed with. Case work is discrete; students rarely possess sufficient gen-
eralizing power to redeem it from scrappiness. At the bedside not much time is avail-
able for comprehensive or philosophical elucidation. The lecture — hugging as closely
as may be the solid ground of experienced fact — may therefore from time to time
be employed to summarize, amplify, and systematize. In time, the student's sense of
reality will be sufficiently pronounced to enable him to grasp a rare condition that he
knows only through exposition. The wards may have failed to supply an example.
But however used — whether to classify first-hand knowledge or to fill up a gap —
the didactic lecture would appear to be pedagogically sound only at a relatively late
stage of the student's discipline. It has no right to forestall experience, filling the
student with ill comprehended notions of what he is going some time to perceive.

Some ingenious Harvard men, profiting by the experience of the Harvard law
school, have evolved an effective discipline in the art of inference. Just as a prelimi-
nary course in physical diagnosis, teaching the student how to gather his facts, is

1 Von Stniinpcll, loc. eit., p. 23.

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 99

valuable, so, it is urged, a formal training in the inductive handling of ascertained
data may be of use to students whose logical habit has been none too strictly formed.
"Let us assume such and such data : what do they mean ? What would you do ?"" This
is the essence of the case method, — a method, by the way, excellently adapted to class
use, calculated there to develop the friction, competition, and interest which are
powerful pedagogical stimulants. It is, moreover, economical, for it brings consider-
able numbers in touch with fertile teachers, at a minimum expenditure of time and
energy.

The class in medicine has another use: it may be made the means of training stu-
dents to use the " literature;" once more, of course, only by way of amplifying an
actual sense- experience. One's own experience always falls short; yet without a
very vivid realization of just what one's own experience is and means, one is in no
position to use a vicarious experience intelligently. The careful taking and keeping
of records is in the first instance the means of clarifying the student's own experience;
the instructor's comments raise the questions which he may profitably investigate in
the literature. The case record in full and an abstract of important publications on
the same subject may well fill a regularly appointed hour given to informal confer-
ence and discussion. The student will thus get into the way of reading substantial
journals and "running down" literature in the course of his actual practice.

It is a nice question as to how the student's time in the third and fourth year is
to be apportioned between patient work, ward work, demonstrative and class exer-
cises, and didactic lectures. The number of hours is itself necessarily elastic : for if
the hospital is a laboratory, it is open at all hours, and, subject to the limitations
fixed in each case by the condition of the patient, the wards may be used by stu-
dents, even though no teaching is going on. The principle upon which division may
be made has been, however, very clearly stated by Cabot and Locke. "Learning
medicine is not fundamentally different from learning anything else. If one had one
hundred hours in which to learn to ride a horse or to speak in public, one might
profitably spend perhaps an hour (in divided doses) in being told how to do it, four
hours in watching a teacher do it, and the remaining ninety-five hours in practice,
at first with close supervision, later under general oversight."1

In what relation is the medical school to stand to its hospital if the methods
above described are to be instituted? Exactly the relation which it occupies to its
laboratories generally. One sort of laboratory may as well be borrowed as another.
The university professor of physics can teach his subject in borrowed quarters quite
as well as the university professor of clinical medicine. Courtesy and comity will go
as far in one case as in the other : in both it keeps teaching to the demonstrative
basis, — or worse, according to the limitations prescribed. The student can never
be part of the organization in a hospital in which he is present on sufferance. A

1<lThe Organization of a Department of Clinical Medicine," by Richard C. Cabot and Edwin A.
Locke, p. 9. (Reprinted from Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, Oct. 19, 1905.)

100 MEDICAL EDUCATION

teaching hospital will not be controlled by the faculty in term-time only; it will not
be a hospital in which any physician may attend his own cases. Centralized admin-
istration of wards, dispensary, and laboratories, as organically one, requires that the
school relationship be continuous and unhampered. The patient's welfare is ever the
first consideration; we shall see that it is promoted, not prejudiced, by the right
kind of teaching. The superintendent must be intelligent and sympathetic ; the fac-
ulty must be the staff, solely and alone, year in, year out. There will be one head to
each department — a chief, with such aides as the size of the service, the degree of
differentiation feasible, the number of students, suggest. The professor of medicine
in the school is physician-in-chief to the hospital; the professor of surgery is surgeon-
in-chief; the professor of pathology is hospital pathologist. School and hospital are
thus interlocked. Assistants, internes, students, collaborate in amassing data and
compiling case records. The student is part of the hospital machine ; he can do no
harm while all the pressure of its efficient and intelligent routine is used to train
him in thorough and orderly method. There comes a time, indeed, in a physician's
development when any opportunity to look on is helpful ; but only after he is trained :
his training he cannot get by looking on. That he gets by doing: in the medical
school if he can; otherwise, in his early practice, which in that case furnishes his
clinical schooling without a teacher to keep the beginner straight and to safeguard
the welfare of the patient.

The relationship here indicated has not thus far, as a rule, proved attainable in
the United States except through the separate creation of a university hospital. In
Germany, where hospitals and universities belong to the same government, our
problem does not arise; nor in England and Scotland, where hospital and school
have grown up together. In the United States — outside, once more, the few fortunate
institutions like Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, and the University of
Michigan — the schools developed as detached faculties, craving, after a while, some
sort of demonstrative teaching privilege in hospitals conducted by the municipality
or by philanthropic associations as temporary homes for sick people. Political reasons
in the former instance, prudential in the latter, generally forbade an exclusive re-
lationship. Lack of funds interfered with the establishment of laboratories; compe-
tition between rival schools required that privileges be both divided and restricted;
finally, the inferiority of the students was an insuperable obstacle to any teaching
method which sought to use them in the wards in any responsible way whatsoever.
More intelligent conceptions are becoming current: the student body improves;
competition yields here and there to consolidation. Even so, there remain generally
insuperable difficulties: purely philanthropic enterprises must be economically con-
ducted, and they cannot in most places play favorites in the local profession. Ade-
quate equipment, effective organization, and continuous staff service are therefore
as a rule improbable. The hospital and dispensary which the medical school must
provide to obtain these conditions need be large enough to furnish only the funda-

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 101

mental training of the student body in method and to afford the various members
of the faculty their own several workshops. Each department needs beds and accom-
panying facilities enough to care for typical clinical cases for instruction and for
such other cases as the teacher himself wants to study under the most favorable
conditions. Beyond this requirement, other local hospitals may well provide supple-
mentary illustrative material, particularly for advanced students. Once more, a long
list of such supplementary opportunities scattered through the town is no substitute
for the fundamental teaching and working hospital, on the existence of which even
a fairly satisfactory use of additional and imperfectly controlled clinical material
depends. Indeed, without such a teaching hospital, the school cannot even organize
a clinical faculty in any proper sense of the term.

The control of the hospital by the medical school puts another face on its rela-
tions to its clinical faculty. What would one think of an institution that, requiring
a professor of physics, began by seeking some one who had his own laboratory or
had got leave to work a while daily in a laboratory belonging to some one else? That
is the position of the medical school that, in order to gain even limited use of a hos-
pital ward, has to cajole a staff physician with a professorial title! When the hospital
belongs to the medical school, appointments are made on the basis of fitness, emi-
nence, skill. A man is promoted if he deserves it; if a better man is available else-
where, he is imported. Opportunities are his in virtue of the university's choice : it is
absurd to reverse the order. The men thus freely selected will be professors in the
ordinary acceptation of the term : they hold chairs in an institution resting on a
collegiate basis, — a graduate institution, in other words. They will be simulta-
neously teachers and investigators. Non-progressive clinical teaching involves a con-
tradiction in terms. The very cases which are exhibited to beginners have their
unique features. New problems thus spring up. Every accepted line of treatment
leaves something to be desired. Who is to improve matters, if not your university
professor, with the hospital in which he controls conditions, with a dozen laboratories
at his service for such aid as he summons, with a staff who will be eyes and ears and
hands for him in his absence? These conditions exist in Germany, and clinical science
has there thriven ; they are lacking here, and clinical medicine droops in consequence.
Undoubtedly, outright research institutions for clinical medicine are also necessary,
the routine of the clinical teacher cuts into his time, to some extent limits the tasks
he may essay, for the knotty problems of clinical medicine are excessively compli-
cated and difficult. But the field abounds in questions for which the university hos-
pital with its laboratories is the right place. Nor will the young doctor, for all his
admirable technique, prove a progressive practitioner, even to the extent of keeping
up his reading, unless his teachers have been so before him.

By the laboratories connected with the university hospital we do not mean merely
the fundamental laboratories, described in a previous chapter, or the clinical labo-
ratory, just mentioned: the former as such deal with the subject-matter of their

102 MEDICAL EDUCATION

respective sciences, in their general relations; the latter is part of the routine ma-
chinery of the hospital. To suffice for clinical investigation the laboratory staff must
be so extended as to place, at the immediate service of the clinician, the experimental
pathologist, experimental physiologist, and clinical chemist in position to bring all
the resources of their several departments to bear on the solution of concrete clinical
problems. Of these branches, experimental pathology and physiology have already
won recognition ; the next step in progress seems to lie in the field of clinical chemistry,
thus far quite undeveloped in America.

It follows that in other respects, too, the clinical professors will be on the common
university basis: salaried, as other professors are. Of course, their salaries will be in-
adequate, i.e., less than they can earn outside, — all academic salaries paid to the
right men are. But there is no inherent reason why a professor of medicine should
not make something of the financial sacrifice that the professor of physics makes :
both give up something — less and less, let us hope, as time goes on — in order to
teach and to investigate. The clinical teacher should indeed not arbitrarily restrict
his experience: he may wisely develop — preferably in close connection with the hos-
pital— a consulting practice, assured thus that his time will not be sacrificed to
trivial ailments. On the same basis, other university facilities are at the service of
those who require unusually skilful aid; for at all points only good can come of
educational contact with unsolved problems, — practical or other. But a consulting
practice — developed in a professional or commercial, rather than in a scientific spirit
— may prove quite as fatal to scientific interest as general practice. University hos-
pitals, academic salaries, etc., make the conditions in which clinical medicine may
be productively cultivated. They do not create ideals; and without ideals, super-
abundant and highly paid consultations are perhaps as demoralizing as superabun-
dant low-priced "calls."1

The financial resources at this moment available are far from adequate to provide
hospitals exclusively and continuously the laboratory of the clinical departments
of medical schools, and faculties composed in the first place of scientific teachers of
clinical medicine. Twenty-five years ago as much would have been said in reply to
a plea for thirty medical schools each equipped with a complete set of scientific
laboratories. When the number of our medical schools is once reduced to our actual
requirement, the sum involved in properly equipping them with hospitals will not
appear impossibly formidable. Meanwhile, existing hospitals may well enlarge their
teaching facilities, where such facilities are open to a high-grade student body. No-
thing is clearer than that an intimate relation to medical education properly carried
on is to the advantage of all concerned, — to the larger public, by producing better
physicians, to the patient, by procuring for him more competent attention. On this
point there is no room for doubt. " I speak after an experience of nearly forty years,"

»Sce, for example, Graham Lusk :" Medical Education," Journal Amer. Med. Atm., April 17, 1909,
pp. 1229, 1230, and S. J. MelUer, "The Science ofClinical Medicine, " ibid., August H, 1909, pp. 50&-12.

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 103

says Dr. Keen, "as a surgeon to a half-dozen hospitals, and can confidently say that
I have never known a single patient injured or his chances of recovery lessened by
such teaching. Moreover, . . . who will be least slovenly and careless in his duties,
— he who prescribes in the solitude of the sick-chamber and operates with two or three
assistants only, or he whose every movement is eagerly watched by hundreds of eyes,
alert to detect every false step? ... I always feel at the Jefferson Hospital as if I
were on the run, with a pack of lively dogs at my heels."1 Miss Bun field, after an
ample experience, looking at the question solely from the standpoint of patient and
nurse, takes the same position: "As a matter of fact, in a properly administered hos-
pital, medical schools are a protection to the patient rather than otherwise, for it
usually means that the hospital is a very live one. ... In teaching hospitals, I think
that on the whole patients are generally better nursed, for every one is kept up to
the mark, including the professors."2 The committee appointed in 1905 to inquire
into the financial relations between the hospitals and the medical schools of London,
touch in their conclusions the point here in question : "We find," they say, "that
the presence of a body of eager young men watching the proceedings of their teacher
has the tendency to keep the medical man on the alert and to counteract the effects
of the daily routine of duties."3

There is little difference of opinion as to the necessary size of a teaching hospital.
Less than two or three hundred beds, in practically continuous occupation, can
hardly supply either the number or the variety of cases required. It is held that a
hospital of 400 beds will support a medical school of at least 500 students. It is
highly important that the instructor should have the material that he needs when he
needs it. The material must, moreover, be properly distributed: an abundant clinic
in diseases of the eye is no substitute for defects in the departments of internal
medicine and obstetrics ; seventy -five cases of operated appendicitis do nothing to
compensate for the lack of typhoid, pneumonia, or scarlet fever.

The size of the school has, of course, some bearing on the necessary size of the
hospital, though the hospital cannot be allowed to shrink in exactly the same ratio
as the number of students. Because two hundred beds may be made to suffice for one
hundred students, it does not follow that twenty beds suffice for ten students. Twenty-
five students require in general the same minimum as one hundred students. On the
other hand, it is fair to weigh advantages and disadvantages against each other. A
small number of students in a small but still fairly representative and completely
controlled university hospital, through whose corridors fresh scientific breezes from
the university and medical school laboratories blow, will get a better discipline in the

JW. W. Keen: "The Duties and Responsibilities of the Trustees of Public Medical Institutions,"

Transactions Congress Amer. Physicians and Surgeons, 1903.

2 Maud Banfield : "Some Unsettled Questions in Hospital Administration in the United States,"

Publications of Amer. Acad. Pol. and Soc. Science, no. 351, pp. 46, 47 (slightly abridged).

3 Report of the Committee. Published for King Edward's Hospital Fund for London, by George

Barber, 93 Furnival Street, Holborn, E. C. p. v, 15 (B).

104 MEDICAL EDUCATION

technique of modern medicine than a larger body, loosely supervised in an antiquated
city hospital where "students" are eyed askance as interlopers. The defects of the
former, due to somewhat circumscribed experience, a hospital year will quickly re-
deem, for he has, and knows how to use, the tools; the defects of the latter will as a
rule never be repaired at all. Such a hospital year is in any event highly desirable.
It is to be hoped that a more effective and economical organization of preliminary
education and a more intelligent public opinion may presently make its exaction
generally feasible.1

On the basis of the undergraduate instruction described, opportunities for ad-
vanced or graduate instruction must supervene. Such opportunities serve two quite
different functions. In the first place, the various specialties must be systematically
and thoroughly developed as graduate pursuits, resting on a thorough training and
experience in general medicine. The number of these specialties is increasing, as more
varied and more effective appliances suggest increased differentiation, — a safe ten-
dency, in the interest of efficiency, provided the discipline required does not infringe
upon undergraduate territory. In the next place, to these postgraduate institutions
the hard-run intelligent practitioner in smaller towns will at intervals return, in
order to be invigorated at the head- waters : he will want to get in touch with recent
improvement, to see in a brief period a large variety of interesting material, handled
by experts in his own field. To both these purposes, the larger hospitals of our great
cities may freely lend themselves. Their abundant wards can be used to excellent
advantage, even though they may continue to be governed by their present boards.
It is probable that the obstacles to such use will largely disappear as the competitive
and commercial exploitation of medical education is itself abandoned. For beyond
all doubt, not the least serious of the deplorable consequences that have followed in
the wake of mercenary medical education is the limitation of hospital opportunities,
due to the rivalry of "faculties" and to the incompetent student body to which, largely
because of such antagonisms, the intimacy of the ward privilege would have had to
be extended.

1 Our required medical course, prior to practice, now covers four years. In Germany five years must
be spent at the university, a sixth in a hospital; in England, "official statistics published recently
under the authority of the General Medical Council show that the mean length or the curriculum in
the case of 1 1 1 1 students investigated was three weeks less than seven years ; only 14 per cent suc-
ceeded in obtaining a qualification in the minimum period of five years, 35 per cent obtained it in the
sixth year, 18 per cent in the seventh year, 13 per cent in the eighth year. When the remaining 20
per cent obtained it does not appear, probably never. Looking at the figures in another way, we
find that at the end of six years less than half had obtained a qualification for registration, and at
the end of seven years only two-thirds." Britith Medical Journal, Sept 5, 1908, p. 634.

CHAPTER VII

THE COURSE OF STUDY
THE HOSPITAL AND THE MEDICAL SCHOOL

THE THIRD AND FOURTH YEARS (CONTINUED)

IN the end the final test of a medical school is its outcome in the matter of clinicians.
The battle may indeed be lost before a shot is fired : a low average of student intel-
ligence and inferior laboratory training will fatally prejudice even excellent clinical
opportunities, for they rule out certain essential features of clinical training on a
modern basis. A serviceable type of doctor was doubtless once produced under con-
ditions that we now pronounce highly unsatisfactory; again, students defectively
trained sometimes meet with success in examination or other tests designed to ascer-
tain the quality of their instruction. It is not necessary to investigate closely the
merits of the test in order to refute the argument that it endeavors to sustain. The
institutions that seek to establish the non-importance of facilities that they do not
possess emphasize strongly the importance of those they do. And with good reason.
Before undertaking the responsibility of instruction in chemistry or physics or bio-
logy, a competent teacher stipulates that he be provided with this, that, or the other.
He is not to be put off with the assurance that some men have successfully mastered
the subject without laboratory or tools. Very properly he takes the ground that
whatever may be true of individuals, in general boys will be much better trained in
a laboratory with the essentials than in a bare room practically without them. It is
equally true of clinicians. Doctors have after a fashion been made by experience, —
i.e., their patients paid the price; further, some graduates of every feeble clinical
school in the country have passed state board examinations or obtained hospital
appointments, at times after competitive examinations in which they defeated stu-
dents from schools more highly favored; it still remains true that to do full duty by
the young student of clinical medicine, his teachers need access to acute cases of
disease in respectable number and variety; that the school which lacks such medical
facilities is in no position to teach modern medicine.

In the matter of laboratories we discovered no slight cause for satisfaction. Within
two decades the laboratory movement has gained such momentum that its future,
even its immediate future, is in no doubt. A race of laboratory men has been trained
and quite widely distributed. They know their place and function ; they have edu-
cated the college administrator to accept them at their own valuation. Where deficient
resources still force a compromise, the apologetic attitude is a sufficient promise of
more liberal provision by and by. On the clinical side the outlook is less reassuring.
The profession itself has in large measure still to be educated ; the clinical faculty
often stands between the university administrator and a sound conception of clinical
training. It happens, therefore, not infrequently that a university president will hear

106 MEDICAL EDUCATION

with astonishment, if not with resentment, that facilities made up of insecure and dis-
connected privileges scattered here and there through the hospitals, public and private,
of a community now large, now small, do not satisfy the fundamental requisites of
clinical discipline surpervening upon modern laboratory work; or that a surgical
clinic is no substitute for a clinic in internal medicine. The regeneration of clinical
education is therefore apt to proceed somewhat slowly : the sources from which well
trained clinical teachers can be drawn are few; the places in which they can be
freely utilized are equally restricted. Students trained in the laboratories on modern
lines enter clinical departments still more or less unconverted. The result is at best
a half-result, yet upon it progressive amelioration in large measure depends.

Once more a few schools meet the specifications set forth in the preceding chapter.
We there urged that the backbone of clinical instruction must be a pedagogically
controlled hospital best developed on its medical side. The exact status of the hospi-
tal may indeed vary : a proper footing has been obtained now through coordinate and
cooperative endowment,1 again through state support in connection with the state
university,3 at times through a really effective affiliation.3 The crucial points are
these: (1) the hospital must be of sufficient size; (2) it must be equipped with teach-
ing and working quarters closely interwoven in organization and conduct with the
fundamental laboratories of the medical school; (3) the school faculty must be the
sole and entire hospital staff, appointment to which follows automatically after ap-
pointment to the corresponding school position ; (4) the teaching arrangements to
be adopted must be left to the discretion and judgment of the teachers, subject only
to such oversight as will protect the welfare of the individual patient.

As long ago as 1869 the department of medicine of the University of Michigan
began in a remodeled dwelling-house, capable of accommodating twenty patients, the
development of a university hospital on fundamentally sound lines. From this modest
beginning a teaching hospital of two hundred beds has now grown up, every patient
available for the purposes of instruction, in so far as his own welfare permits. The
staff of the hospital is the faculty of the school; the ward service in his own depart-
ment is the laboratory of the professor. Ward rounds and amphitheater clinics are
used for demonstrative teaching; but, better still, students are assigned to indi-
vidual cases, which they work up at the bedside and in the clinical laboratory. An
isolation ward is provided for infectious diseases; a lying-in ward is administered by
faculty obstetricians and senior students; recently a psychopathic hospital, thoroughly
modern in construction and management, has been made available. Difficulties, of
course, of a serious nature have been encountered ; the state by a liberal policy has
minimized them. Ann Arbor is a small residential town; it is necessary to attract or

1 Johns Hopkins.

* Michigan ; Iowa.

* Lakeside Hospital and Western Reserve (Cleveland). The newly endowed Barnes Hospital
(St. Louis) will occupy \ similar position in reference to Washington University.

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 107

to transport thither many cases from other parts of the state. The outcome practically
formulates for us the terms upon which such an enterprise is feasible : a modern equip-
ment, a salaried clinical faculty, clean-cut ideals, and careful husbandry will build up
a substantial clinic in a small American as in a small German town. It can be sup-
plemented by bringing the hospitals of the entire state into working relation with
the medical department of the state university. The expense of the establishment is
relatively great; but the advantages over a divided, perhaps even a remote depart-
ment,1 are on the whole cheap at the price. How many more such institutions we
should, however, now undertake to create is of course quite another question.2

The Johns Hopkins Medical School has been even more highly favored. Its hos-
pital endowment was, fortunately, sufficient to warrant a comprehensive design from
the start. The general teaching hospital then provided has been recently supplemented
by generous benefactions that add separate clinics for tuberculosis, pediatrics, and
psychiatry ; wards, dispensary, clinical and scientific laboratories, cooperate for both
pedagogic and philanthropic purposes. The clinical departments are organized like
any other. Nowhere else in the country has so consistent a scheme been so admirably
realized. The student is made a factor in the conduct of the hospital : he assists on
the clinical side as clerk, on the surgical side as dresser, following the admirable
method long in vogue in the Scotch and English schools. In each department he
serves an appointed novitiate, following his "cases" from start to finish, — now to
recovery, again to autopsy.

There is no insuperable reason why several other medical schools should not take
advantage of a fortunate relation to hospitals to bring about an equally effective
organization. In one place lack of money, in another, hampering tradition, alone pre-
vents. The organization above described cannot be perfected unless these two defects
are simultaneously cured. If hospitals are to enter into exclusive and practically com-
plete relationship with a single medical school, the university must on its side pro-
cure funds which enable it to be independent of the local profession. Unless these
two conditions are coincidently fulfilled, the clinical situation cannot be thoroughly
made over. Three Philadelphia schools (the University of Pennsylvania, the Jeffer-
son Medical College, and the Medico-Chirurgical College), two Baltimore schools
(the University of Maryland and the College of Physicians and Surgeons), and one
Chicago school (Rush Medical College ),s are in sole and complete control of excellent
hospitals, more or less adequate in size. The same intimacy is equally desirable and
equally feasible for both parties in interest between Wesley Hospital and North-

1 The divided department is discussed from the laboratory side, page 74 ; from the clinical side,
page 119. For an account of remote departments, see (Part II) University of Texas, University of
Indiana, Cornell University.

2 Similar hospitals, not as yet so well developed, are at present connected with several other state
universities : the Universities of Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, Texas. The details are given in Part II,
under the several institutions.

'But in this instance the patient's consent must first be obtained.

108 MEDICAL EDUCATION

western University,1 between Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University. The re-
luctance of the hospital to go the whole length is in these latter cases the most for-
midable obstacle to perfecting a relation that would be of incalculable advantage to
all concerned. For assuredly the university medical schools just named, if offered com-
plete teaching control, could cope with the problem of procuring means with which
to reorganize their clinical faculties on a scientific and pedagogical basis. The en-
lightened action of its trustees is rapidly perfecting the same connection between the
admirable Lakeside Hospital of Cleveland and Western Reserve University. The new
Barnes and Children's Hospitals of St. Louis have engaged to do as much for the
reconstructed medical department of Washington University. McGill, Toronto, the
University of Manitoba (Winnipeg), and Tulane are in practically secure possession
of clinical facilities that are adequate in respect alike to extent and control. It is to
be noted that the schools above named do not own the hospitals in which their clini-
cal teaching is given. Western Reserve and Lakeside thus prove the feasibility of a
smooth working connection between a university department of medicine and a pri-
vate hospital; Toronto proves the same as between a university medical school and
a municipal hospital. Technically, neither set of trustees can renounce control; they
must ratify appointments ; but that act can either be reduced to a formality or ex-
panded into meddlesome supervision, as the trustees choose. In the two instances cited,
it has become a mere form; and two objects, both precious, are most effectively pro-
moted in consequence. On the strength of these instances it is perhaps worth while
to make one more plea for an understanding between existing hospitals and deserving
medical schools. Cannot an arrangement be consummated by which the administra-
tion and financing of a private or a municipal hospital shall be left to the trustees
and their appointed agents, while equally, even though not technically, complete and
separate responsibility for the medical conduct of the hospital and for teaching
within its wards is left to the medical faculty ? As these functions are absolutely dis-
tinct from each other, there is no reason why two bodies of intelligent men, desirous
of doing right in their respective spheres, should not thus cooperate. If, of course,
the trustees are every now and then going to overrule the university in the securing
of a teacher or to overrule a physician in his treatment of patients, the situation be-
comes intolerable and impossible. Instances have occurred, for example, in which the
board of women managers of a children's hospital has forbidden the use of lumbar
puncture. It is not strange that these things have happened, because neither party
to the arrangement has had definite ideas as to the limits of its province. Now, how-
ever, that there is no further doubt as to just what the trustees ought to do, on the
one hand, and as to just what the university ought to do, on the other, it would ap-
pear an auspicious time for extending the experiment. The list of teaching hospitals
as above given is so far not large. It may, however, to some extent be lengthened by

1 At present, clinics at Wesley Hospital are not limited to Northwestern University students.

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 109

adding schools with hospitals not as yet adequate in size, of which type the Univer-
sity of Virginia furnishes the most satisfactory example. Long contentedly a didactic
school, this institution has just undertaken to develop a modern clinical department.
The new and excellent University Hospital, with eighty ward beds, is still under size.
But a speedy development may be somewhat confidently anticipated. Its problem
is that which Michigan has already shown how to solve; meanwhile it is perfectly
clear that the justification of such a school lies in the fact that its situation makes
possible the most intimate relations between the clinic and the scientific laboratories,
and a discipline in medical technique so thorough and so vigorous that a few gaps in
the student's experience may prove relatively insignificant. There is every indication
that the University of Virginia thoroughly appreciates both points.

By no means every hospital owned by a medical school is, however, to be reckoned
a teaching asset. The details require to be closely scanned. In many cases they are
private institutions, in process of being paid for out of their own profits and out of
the fees of medical students, who are lured by the advertisement of a school hospi-
tal from which they get no good at all. Barnes Medical College (St. Louis) adjoins
Centenary Hospital, " which affords clinical facilities surpassed by none and equalled
by few;" but except for part of one floor, the building is given over to private rooms.1

Where control ceases, ideals necessarily change. A medical school with its own
hospital may of course be sterile. Unwise appointments may cut off all possibility
of productivity; too much consultant prosperity may be fatal to scientific zeal; in-
breeding may exhaust fecundity. On the other hand, an occasional clinician may
keep his lamp trimmed despite every obstacle, — poor facilities, a precarious term of
service, lack of appreciative sympathy. Neither the one nor the other contingency,
however, militates against the position that as between the two systems a school
hospital is in America essential to the existence of an efficient department of clinical
medicine; that in its absence the general plane of instruction settles down to a dis-
tinctly lower level.

The best of the schools without a hospital which they can call their own do not
lack for abundance or variety of clinical material. Rush, Northwestern, the College of
Physicians and Surgeons (Chicago), Columbia, Cornell, and the University and Belle-
vue Hospital Medical College (New York), Harvard and Tufts (Boston), are not
troubled for clinical material; some of them have more of it than they can possibly
use, — much more than several of the university hospitals can ever hope to command.
But the conditions to which they submit in order to gain access to it at all, though
varying somewhat from place to place, are alike fatal to freedom and continuity of
pedagogic policy. Our clinical failure concurs with the clinical success of the Germans
in proving that freedom is the very life-breath of scientific progress, — freedom on

1 Similar is the relation between the medical department of Lincoln Memorial University (Knoxville)
and its hospital next door ; between the University Medical College and the University Hospital (Kan-
sas City) ; and between the Milwaukee Medical College and Trinity Hospital.

110 MEDICAL EDUCATION

the part of the university to choose its own teachers, finding them where it may ;
freedom on the part of the teachers to strike out along whatever path they please.
An artificial impediment will in general entail barrenness.

The institutions above named are necessarily confined to the local profession for
clinical teachers, — a restriction that they would find intolerable in any other depart-
ment and that they endure under protest in medicine, only because they are not yet
financially in position to throw off the yoke. No disrespect to the practising profes-
sion in these large cities is implied: they are doubtless as good doctors as can be
found anywhere. But they are not teachers; they have neither time for, nor effective
interest in, productive teaching. If they were really as much interested in clinical sci-
ence as in professional prosperity, they could as a body do much to improve hospital
conditions on the pedagogical side. As a matter of fact, professional prominence and
institutional rivalry keep the college tenure insecure, often chop the hospital services
into short terms, compel hospital authorities to abridge teaching privileges in order
to avoid friction, and present a solid and opposing front to the importation of outsid-
ers, even though the outsider chance to reside in the same town. Under such condi-
tions it becomes at once impossible to entertain in clinical medicine the ideals set up
in the laboratories of pathology, physiology, or chemistry. One pitches one's ex-
pectations lower. It becomes a scramble for abundance and variety of "facilities'* on
the part of the schools ; public hospitals split up and overload their services in order
to distribute their favors widely; private institutions promote their prosperity by de-
clining exclusive alliances. In Chicago staff positions in the great Cook County Hos-
pital are awarded every six years by competitive examination; and the schools make
what terms they can with the winners, who rotate from ward to ward at stated pe-
riods. No bedside clinics are allowed; patients are wheeled into teaching-rooms or
amphitheaters for demonstration ; anyone who purchases a ticket may attend any
clinic that he pleases. The student gets an excellent chance to see detached conditions;
what he loses is the opportunity to observe individual cases of disease in process of
development and to correlate his own laboratory findings with symptoms observed
at the bedside. As for the professors, whisked about in rotation, scientific study is
out of the question. At Bellevue Hospital (New York), Columbia, Cornell, and New
York University have each a "division," within which, however, they are not supreme;
the medical board, composed of the entire visiting staff of all three schools and the
fourth division, — the outsiders, — limits the freedom of the several parties in interest;
final authority is lodged with a lay board, who have, for example, recently overruled
Columbia in its own division. At Boston neither Harvard nor Tufts has the initia-
tive in filling staff positions in the hospitals used in teaching. Appointments are
made by seniority; it is well-nigh impossible for the school to break the line. In
Boston as in New York, the large hospitals tend to have their own pathological de-
partments, the permanence of whose relation to the corresponding department of
the medical schools is decidedly uncertain. Money and educational opportunity are

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 111

thus both wasted. As a rule, services rotate every three or four months; the hospitals
sometimes provide clinical laboratory space in which students work.1 All these in-
stitutions possess supplementary facilities. In general, however, supplementary clini-
cal opportunities are of fragmentary and precarious character; the medical school
has as such no uniform constitution, nor is a single department an organized entity;
clinical clerks may be employed by one teacher for three months, only to be spurned
by his successor in the service at the close of his brief term. Fresh pathological ma-
terial may be procured by giving a faculty appointment to a coroner's physician,
while the professor of pathology scours the city in vain for admission to a dead -room;
instead of compact departments pulling as a whole towards a definite goal, a half-
dozen professors of medicine and surgery stand on an equal footing, each compelled
to conform to conditions imposed by the hospital on the staff of which he is a tran-
sient sojourner, or holding the whip-handle over his own school, because the school
cannot antagonize the clinical professor without imperiling its clinical opportuni-
ties correspondingly. The normal relation of school and teacher is inverted. The
question is not, "Who is a good teacher?" but rather, "Who controls a hospital
service?" In a large city, the curtain rises on a dozen hospitals, each already provided
with a staff, and several medical schools, each requiring a faculty of men who can
bring as their dower "clinical facilities." There is a lively competition: at once, every
holder of a hospital service finds himself a potential professor of medicine, surgery, or
whatnot. When the scramble is over, the counted spoils appear in the catalogue in
the form of a list of the hospitals "open to students of this school." The hospital
appointments are therefore valuable "plums." They give the holders the call in the
matter of school rank; and school positions are still in most places of substantial
commercial value. It happens, in consequence, that the schools under discussion are
put together of two dissimilar pieces : the laboratory branches are of one texture,
the clinical branches of another. The laboratory men are imported; their produc-
tivity has been increased by crossing the breed. The clinical men are local2 and, with
some notable exceptions, contentedly non-productive. There is little intercourse across
the line in either direction. The redeeming feature of these schools is, then, simply
the amount and variety of clinical material that their students see.

The plane drops once more as we leave behind these large schools and approach
the next class. Conditions now become rapidly worse through aggravation. Hospital
management becomes increasingly unsympathetic or unintelligent, thus keeping the
schools on the anxious bench. In truth, not much can be expected. "Amongst the

1 In a few services a continuous term prevails for the time being, — sometimes by arrangement among
the teachers themselves, sometimes by way of personal compliment to an individual. Welcome as
such improvements are, they are far from curing the trouble.

2 One can in a few lines give a complete list of schools that can and do go outside the local profession
to procure clinical teachers : Johns Hopkins, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, Yale,
Tulane (in medicine), University of Pennsylvania, and Washington University. These institutions
have imported perhaps a score or two of clinical teachers ; there are almost 4000 more clinical pro-
fessors in the United States and Canada who are practising local doctors.

112 MEDICAL EDUCATION

hospital superintendents I know of, there are, besides a very few physicians, an ex-
newspaper reporter, a ward boss, a china factory hand, various clerks, and a still
more varied assortment of clergymen. ... In order that domestic complaints may
be removed, a committee of ladies is sometimes appointed, . . . their only claim to
knowledge being that of the 'born housekeeper' supposed to be inherent in every
woman. The organization and management of institution households, however, hav-
ing little in common with that of a few maids and no sick people, the management
of details by visiting committees is often but an added discomfort."1

Such institutions are mere boarding-houses for the sick. Physicians call there as
they call at a private house, seeing twenty patients in the former instance, a single
patient in the latter. It is the difference between wholesale and retail, — no other;
scientifically the " calls " are on the same level. The visiting staff of physicians is ap-
pointed through favor, pull, or bargain, and the schools make the best of it. A small
clique occasionally controls the situation. Conspicuous fitness cannot be the sole or
main consideration. A school rich in facilities to-day may be beggarly to-morrow.
The medical department of Toledo University has just lost its main clinical sup-
port as one outcome of a local political overturning. The University of Minnesota
has been fortunately hastened in the resolution to build its own hospital because a
local upset reduced its former privileges. The Woman's Medical College of Phila-
delphia adjoins a hospital of which its faculty was once the staff; now there is no
commerce between them. The Hering Medical College at Chicago (homeopathic) is
in even closer proximity to a homeopathic hospital : a bridge connects them ; but the
barred doorway bears the legend, " No students admitted." Medical politics are de-
cisive at Albany ; to keep control in the hands of the dominant clique of the Albany
Medical School (the medical department of Union University), the size of the fac-
ulty was recently increased, all the new members being adherents of the side in
power. The City Hospital at St. Louis, the County Hospital at Denver, are frankly
described as being "in politics."2 Staff appointments made for personal or political
reasons may of course be revoked for reasons that are no better. The uncertainty of
any one connection constitutes a good reason for getting hold of as many as possible.
Columbia, for example, used to be supreme at Roosevelt Hospital, opposite its lab-
oratories; it is being gradually edged out, — a deplorable condition for all concerned;
but it has recompensed itself abundantly elsewhere. The medical department of the
George Washington University protects itself by providing that "every clinical
teacher shall cease to be such teacher should his facilities for giving clinical instruc-
tion cease before the end of his term of service."8 If a school drops an indifferent
teacher, it may be worse off than if it retained him ; for he keeps, and the school
loses, the "clinical facilities'" that he represents. St. Louis University, in purchasing

1 Banfielcl, loc. fit., pp. 42, 43 (abridged). Occasionally, feeling is cordial, as at Topeka, for example.

'The same is admitted at Halifax, N. S.

8 Ordinance to Reorganize the Department of Medicine, section 3.

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 118

its present medical department, contracted to keep the clinical professors in their
chairs for a term of years. When the term expires, they are free to drop them, — at
the cost, however, of cutting down their clinics in the same ratio. In a few places
things are held together somewhat more compactly by an arrangement that gives
the school faculty the hospital services during term time. Such is the case at Mobile,
Birmingham, and Chattanooga. But in general a hospital staff is composed of hetero-
geneous elements, appointed for reasons that cannot be classified. Representatives of
no school and representatives of all schools, serving now through the year, again for
a few weeks, now in one ward only, now rotated through several, make up a situa-
tion unfavorable to every interest involved. In New York the ancient ecclesiastical
evil of plural benefices crops out unexpectedly : one individual may hold several ap-
pointments in hospitals so far removed from each other that he cannot possibly do
even his perfunctory duty by them ; instead of surrendering superfluous perquisites,
he sub-lets them at will, according as fancy or personal interest may determine : the
staff appointments appended to his name are so many scalps hung about his belt !
There is no such thing as hospital policy : the wards have as little wholeness, as little
intimacy of relation with each other, as the private homes in which these same physi-
cians treat their personal patients; only a local accident puts one roof over them.

Teaching is obviously but an incident in the routine of these institutions. Not
infrequently amphitheaters have been included in their construction ; but they usu-
ally lack a clinical laboratory in which students may work, not a few lack it altogether.
The failure to provide clinical laboratory space thus keeps instruction to the level of
passive demonstration. The student has presumably spent two years in mastering cer-
tain medical sciences. A large part of this laboratory discipline was designed to en-
able him to gather a greater variety of facts than the bedside examination will dis-
close. Blood, sputum, urine, etc., all contain important evidence which the laboratory
years equip the student to utilize. He has been taught to do certain things. But at
the critical moment, when doing them will count, he may get no chance, in the first
place, because at many hospitals, among them those mainly relied on by the Univer-
sity of Nebraska (Omaha), Denver and Gross (Denver), the Hahnemann Medical Col-
lege (Philadelphia), and most southern schools, there is no clinical laboratory at all.
At Denver "there is no equipment to make a culture, and the internes are rarely
equal to it, anyway."" At Omaha, the clinical microscopist of the university faculty
was unable even to get material from the County Hospital; when he wanted gastric
juice for demonstration, he had to manufacture it himself. In the second place, where
a clinical laboratory is provided, "students" are as a rule not admitted. The work
is done by a resident pathologist who has no connection with any of the several
"schools'" that are permitted to demonstrate cases in the amphitheater or in the
wards; or by internes, equally detached and too frequently of very doubtful com-
petency by reason of just the educational limitations we are deploring. To the clinical
laboratories connected with the municipal hospitals of St. Louis, Chicago, Minne-

114 MEDICAL EDUCATION

apolis, students have no access, though in these hospitals, rich in material, the students
of St. Louis University, Rush and the College of Physicians and Surgeons (Chicago),
the University of Minnesota, respectively, ought to be getting the best part of their
clinical training. Not infrequently it is alleged that the students do "carry material
for examination back to the college:" the students of the Creighton School (Omaha)
and of the Los Angeles schools would thus have to transfer specimens of urine, feces,
and gastric contents on the street cars across town, — distances of several miles. At
Southwestern University (Dallas, Texas), a section of four students has an assigned
patient at the City Hospital, perhaps a mile and a half distant, where there is no
clinical laboratory ; to work up material, they must carry it to the college building,
— where there is no clinical laboratory, either. Educationally, an "academic" labo-
ratory discipline that thus hangs loose, that cannot be brought to bear on specific
clinical cases, must be largely wasted. There is no merit in making a blood-count
unless the student has been disciplined to connect the blood-count with all other
symptoms of the patient whose blood is counted. As it is, he beholds a patient, sees
things pointed out, may even listen to his heart-beat ; away off in the college labo-
ratory, he has previously examined some one's urine, counted some one's blood, tested,
perhaps, an artificially prepared gastric juice. But there is no connection; the dis-
cipline splits in the middle. Scientific habits of practice are not established in that
way. Nor are loose habits, thus contracted, cured by an interneship. Pupils are more
apt to disappoint than to astonish their teachers; they do not generally better their
instruction. In consequence hospital records made by internes graduated by these
schools are scant and unsystematic. Defective methods at the University of Buffalo
were extenuated on the plea that as internes they learn better ; but the meager records
of the Buffalo General Hospital disprove the claim. Whoever is responsible, poorly
kept records are very apt to denote inferior bedside instruction. The situation is this :
there lies the patient ; teacher, interne, and students surround the bed. The case is up
for discussion. A question arises that requires for its settlement now a detail of the
patient's previous history, now a point covered by the original physical examination,
now something brought out by microscopic examination at some time in the course
of the disease. If complete, accurate, and systematic records hang at the bedside, there
is an inducement to ask questions ; doubtful matters can be cleared up as fast as they
are suggested. That, then, is the place for the records, — full records, at that. In few
instances are the records full ; in still fewer are they, full or meager, in easy reach.
At the University of Kansas, at Lane Hospital (Cooper Medical College, San Fran-
cisco), there is no uniform method of making or keeping records : " some men do
better than others;" "it depends on the man." At the Protestant Hospital, Colum-
bus, Starling-Ohio graduates are internes, the records are nurses' charts ; at Trinity
Hospital (Milwaukee), attached to the Milwaukee Medical College, the same is true.1

1 Similar instances can be cited from all other sections of the country : the records are nurses' charts
at the hospital of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Little Rock, and at the City Hospital —

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 115

The clinical facilities of the ordinary medical school are put together of scraps, the
general character of which have now been described. They offer a medical clinic here,
an obstetrical clinic there, a skin clinic somewhere else. Faculties numerically out of
all proportion to the number of students are assembled in order to piece out the
quilt : Fordham University has 72 instructors for 42 students; the New York Medi-
cal College for Women has 45 instructors for 24 students; the Toledo Medical Col-
lege, 48 instructors for 32 students ; the Oakland College of Medicine and Surgery,
42 instructors for 17 students. As the hospitals are scattered, time is wasted in going
to and fro. All told, our 150 medical schools have resulted, among other things, in
some 4000 professorial titles.1

Imagine the engineers that would be produced if students were sent to a series of
shops to see things done, — as far as they could be seen without interfering with the
workmen ! In no two of these hospitals is exactly the same kind of teaching privi-
lege granted; and the privileges granted are highly precarious: the hours are arbi-
trarily limited, and number of beds is usually too small. Nowhere do they approach
the ideal which the school might readily institute in its own hospital. They fall
short, however, in varying degrees. In St. Louis the situation is lamentable. The
City Hospital has a medical and surgical staff who "do no teaching," and a teaching
staff who "do no doctoring." Fjach of the half-dozen schools in the town has one
afternoon; the instructor must go out to the hospital the day before to select two
cases for demonstration, — an amount of trouble which the better men are reluctant
to take. The instruction consists in pointing out features and suggesting what ought
to be done : in surgery, it may have been done already ; in medicine, there is no tell-
ing. In either case, the entire process remains purely hypothetical. These opportu-
nities are not infrequently treated as they deserve: at the St. Louis College of Physi-
cians and Surgeons it was stated: "This is hospital day; lots of them don't go." In
the County Hospital at Los Angeles, the main reliance of two university depart-
ments of clinical medicine, — one of them (the University of California) requiring for
admission three years of college work, — students are not permitted to handle sur-

used by two schools — at Memphis ; at Ensworth Hospital, one line in a ledger contains all the facts
on record ; at Topeka, the same is true ; it is added that " laboratory reports are not kept, and physi-
cal examinations could not be found ;" the histories, made up by internes at the Kansas City Hos-
pital, are so irregular that " the visiting staff don't even read them." They are imperfect at the Uni-
versity of Texas (Galveston) ; defective and careless at the Maine General Hospital (Portland).
1 See Table in Appendix, for a complete list. The disproportion in point of number between laboratory
and clinical chairs is instructive. For example :

NUMBER or FCLL PROFESSORS IN

Institution Anatomy
Cornell 2
Columbia 1
St. Louis 1
Denver and Gross 1
University of Louisville 1

Pathology
2
2

1
1
1

Physiology
1

1
8
1
1

Medicine
3
8
5
5
4

Surgery (not in-
cluding gynecology)
9
5
6
5
8

Contrast with these
Johns Hopkins

116 MEDICAL EDUCATION

gical patients, and teachers "shall not conduct bedside clinics when possible to re-
move patients from the ward;"1 on these terms 100 beds are available, for six hours
weekly in surgery, and perhaps for a few more in medicine. At Creighton, students
"witness the operation," and are admitted to about 90 beds. In Denver, students
"are not much at the bedside; they just look on;" the hours are from 8.30 to
10 a.m., daily, — the early hour having been fixed, it is alleged, to prevent the atten-
dance of the state university boys at Boulder. There are "ward classes" at Memphis —
as many as fifty students in a group at once !

Where things are patched up in the way described, it is of course impossible that
proportions and relations should be observed. We have urged that the backbone of
clinical training must be internal medicine. But it is precisely here that the schools
are in general weakest. The sum total of accessible beds may amount to a hundred :
not infrequently less than one-fifth of them will contain medical cases. The "addi-
tional facilities " of the larger schools are mainly surgical in character; and in gen-
eral, the less a school has to offer in the way of clinical facilities, the more heavily
is surgery overweighted. Its pedagogical value is relatively slight; for operations are
performed in large amphitheaters in which the surgeon and his assistants surround
the patient, to whom they give their whole mind, in practical disregard of the
students, who loll in their seats without an inkling of what is happening below. Most
of the students see only the patient's feet and the surgeon's head. Only in rare cases,
previously mentioned, in which the student helps to form the machine, do desig-
nated individuals take turns and become part of the operation, — making the exam-
ination, watching the procedure at close range, and "cleaning up" afterwards.
Inadequacy in general is thus aggravated by increasing predominance of surgical
over medical clinics. Clinical teaching thus tends more and more to concentrate
in the amphitheater. The laboratory side sinks further and further into the back-
ground; the bedside work becomes more and more contracted. The whole thing is
demonstrative — and at steadily increasing remoteness. At the University of Ver-
mont juniors and seniors have most of their medical and surgical clinics together,
averaging in medicine about three hours weekly one year and four hours weekly the
next ; and the work is mostly in the amphitheater. Dartmouth Medical School has
access to 24 beds, eighty per cent of the patients occupying which are surgical cases.
Bowdoin — to complete the list of the smaller New England schools — uses the
Maine General Hospital, Portland, where surgery greatly predominates. Tufts has an
imposing array of clinical facilities; but its medical clinic is limited to the Boston Dis-
pensary and one service in the City Hospital. Kansas Medical College relies almost
wholly on three hospitals, in which it gets a total of nine or ten hours^ instruction
weekly : in two of the three hospitals all the work is surgery; in the remaining, two-
thirds of it. In the university hospital at Rosedale (University of Kansas), there were
last year 240 patients, 190 of them surgical; six free beds are this year reserved for

1 Rulet and Regulations, Lot Angela County Hospital, section 4, rule 12.

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 117

medicine. Of course, the school has privileges elsewhere; but this small hospital is
all that it controls, though two years of college work are required for admission.
The Starling-Ohio Medical College (Columbus) uses several hospitals: in one 150
beds are open, "mostly surgical;" in another 40 beds, "mostly surgery." The De-
troit College of Medicine has access to two hospitals; one of them, with 100 teach-
ing beds, is fortunate in a fairly equal division between medicine and surgery; the
other describes its work as nine-tenths surgical. The clinical instruction of Ep-
worth University (Oklahoma City) is given in a hospital within which 30 to 40
beds are available, two-thirds to three-quarters of the cases being surgical. Drake Uni-
versity uses 30 beds during a weekly total of twelve or fifteen hours in two hospitals,
in neither of which is the student essentially other than a passive witness. The Chicago
College of Medicine and Surgery — being the medical department of Valparaiso
University — has a hospital of 75 beds, about one- fourth usable for teaching; the
Bennett Medical College (Chicago) has a hospital of 40 beds, 20 claimed as free; at
Chattanooga, the city hospital contained, all told, in the course of the year 1908
something over 500 patients; at Augusta,about 300. Temple University (Philadelphia)
has a hospital with 20 free beds; the Woman's Medical College (Philadelphia), 27;
the New York Eclectic Medical College sends parties limited to three students to the
Sydenham hospital twice weekly. The Physio-Medical College of Chicago got along
last year with 167 patients; Western University (London, Ontario) has access to an
average of less than 30 beds a year. At Trinity Hospital (Milwaukee), with 75 beds,
mostly pay, — a part of Milwaukee Medical College, — nine-tenths of the cases or
more are surgical.

We have, however, by no means even yet exhausted the subject of arbitrary clinical
limitations. As a rule, only the general medical and surgical wards are open at all.
Few of the hospitals possess an isolating ward, and not all of these permit students
to see infectious diseases. The instruction in that important branch is therefore
usually didactic. This holds true of some schools that ask two years of college work for
entrance, Yale and the University of Kansas among them. It is true, too, of the New
York Medical College for Women, the University Medical College (Kansas City),
the Starling-Ohio (Columbus), the University of Tennessee, Baylor University and
Southwestern University (Dallas), Louisville, Little Rock, Memphis, etc. At Albany
it was stated that the hospital has a pavilion for infectious diseases, which the school
might use : " it does n't, because the students are afraid." But the very worst showing
is made in the matter of obstetrics. Didactic lectures are utterly worthless. The
manikin is of value only to a limited degree. For the rest, the student requires dis-
cipline and experience. The safety and comfort of both patients — mother and child —
depend on the trained care and dexterity of the physician. The practice is a fine art
which cannot be picked up in the exigencies of out-patient work, poorly supervised
at that. Principles, methods, technique, can be learned and skill acquired only in
an adequately equipped maternity hospital ; only after that is the student fit to be

118 MEDICAL EDUCATION

trusted with the responsibilities of the out-patient department. Difficulties and limi-
tations in such matters sit lightly on most of our medical schools. The hospitals of
Atlanta and Los Angeles exclude students from the obstetrical ward; at Burling-
ton there is no obstetrical ward, but the "students see more or less;" at Denver a
"small amount" of material is claimed; at Birmingham it is "very scarce;" at Chat-
tanooga there are " about ten cases a year," to which students are " summoned," how
or by whom is far from clear. At the Hahnemann Medical College (Chicago) stu-
dents "look on at internes who do the work;" a committee of the Missouri state
board reports of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of St. Louis that it could
find only incomplete records of 21 cases for a senior class of 57 ; at Augusta, Georgia,
the cases " always come at night when you can't get students;" at Charlotte 15 cases
were available from September 15 to February 4; the medical department of Lincoln
Memorial University (Knoxville) has no out-patient department, but alleges "a few
deliveries before the class;" Vanderbilt relies on out-patient work mostly. There is a
senior class of almost 150 at the American School of Osteopathy (Kirksville, Mis-
souri). In two months they had eight clinical cases in obstetrics. Perhaps most
lamentable of all, the Woman's Medical College of Baltimore concedes its opportu-
nities to be "inadequate." At Toledo, Louisville, the University of Tennessee, Kan-
sas City, the University of Kansas, Albany, and Yale, obstetrics is practically alto-
gether out-patient work ; that is to say, the student gets about the same training as
a mid- wife. At Willamette (Salem, Oregon) he probably does not get even that: for
"obstetrics depends on private practice and is very precarious. The student sees a
delivery when the doctor is willing to take him."

Not a few of the schools mentioned have elevated their entrance requirements
until they already demand one or two years of college work for entrance, or expect
to do so presently.1 Meanwhile their clinical facilities remain what they were.
Doubtless some of them will make haste to improve, — Yale, for example. Others
will probably recede from their announced elevation, — as several have already done.
Assuredly, students who improve their preparation will demand that the schools
improve their facilities correspondingly. In the laboratory years this has generally
taken place : he will be a dull fellow who does not quickly feel and resent the inferi-
ority of the clinical end. In all fairness, the betterment of the facilities, the change
of spirit and ideal, ought to have preceded as the warrant for the higher entrance
standard. For the two-year college standard proclaims a university department. It
still remains to be demonstrated that towns like Omaha, Washington, San Francisco,
Toj>eka, Milwaukee, can recruit university faculties from the local profession. A univer-
sity connection or a two-year college entrance requirement do not, of themselves, trans-
form a medical school faculty. They merely impose upon it an additional strain.

The strain to which high entrance standards and good laboratory teaching at

1 Kansas Medical College, Dartmouth, Yale, Creighton, Denver and Gross, Hahnemann (Chicago),
Starling-Ohio, Milwaukee Medical, Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons, etc.

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 119

once subject the clinical end is distinctly apparent in the remote half of the divided
school. We have already1 considered the perplexities of the laboratory end without
contact with clinics. They appeared not insoluble. Whether two clinical years given
by themselves with practising physicians as teachers can ever form a substan-
tial texture is highly problematical. The latter half of a divided school is given by
the University of California at San Francisco,2 by the University of Nebraska at
Omaha,3 by the University of Kansas in a suburb of Kansas City,* by Bowdoin Col-
lege at Portland.5 The American Medical Missionary College carries division still
further. It is divided between Battle Creek and Chicago; but no single year is en-
tirely given in either place. Every class is shifted in the course of the year from one
town to the other. Nor does the division end here; for at Chicago, the clinical in-
struction is divided so that different pieces are given at widely separated places. These
pieces do not touch each other, and none of them ever touches the laboratory work
given in Battle Creek. Indeed, none of the detached clinical departments is doing well.
The vitality of the clinic depends on the closeness of its commerce with the laboratory
branches; otherwise the clinical end is not rooted. Thus far none of these has achieved
either executive or scientific intimacy. A certain degree of executive unity may per-
haps be secured through a dean freely circulating between the two parts, though if
he is attached as professor to one end of the department, the other is apt to resent
intrusion. Scientific unity seems in any case unattainable. The clinical men at Omaha
or San Francisco simply cannot be at home in the laboratories of Lincoln or Berkeley.
Laboratories must be duplicated at the clinical site if the clinicians are to be in touch
with them : in which case the divided type of school tends to turn into the whole re-
mote type illustrated by the medical departments of the universities of Texas at
Galveston, Indiana at Indianapolis, and of Cornell at New York. The truth is that an
efficient medical school is a compact whole, in which geographic unity of labora-
tories and hospital is essential to scientific and educational integrity. The wilted
condition of the clinical ends of the divided schools is a warning that Michigan,
now contemplating the removal to Detroit of the final year in medicine, may well
weigh. Even separation of the two parts within one city is a disadvantage.6 Division
seems justifiable only as a temporary expedient to get clinical material, pending a
choice between concentration of the entire school at one point or the other, or out-
right abandonment of clinical instruction in favor of a two-year school.7

1 Page 74.

2 First half given at Berkeley. The latter half will be duplicated at Los Angeles. Leland Stanford
Junior will shortly give the latter half of its medical course at San Francisco, too ; its first half is
given at Palo Alto.

3 First half given at Lincoln.

4 First half given at Lawrence.
8 First half given at Brunswick.

6 As at Rush (University of Chicago).

7 Several of the southern state universities and the University of Colorado are in this position.

120 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Meanwhile we are not without schools that have practically no hospital connec-
tion at all. The Mississippi Medical College (Meridian) has absolutely no hospital
facilities or privileges of any sort whatsoever. The Georgia College of Eclectic Medi-
cine and Surgery (Atlanta), the California Eclectic Medical College (Los Angeles),
are in the same plight. Others are hardly better: for example, the three Chicago
night schools, one of which, the National Medical University, had two lonely pa-
tients on the top floor of the school-building, though claiming the usual relations
with a private pay institution. Thrice happy for the nonce is the Hippocratean Col-
lege of Medicine (St. Louis), a night school; it crosses no clinical bridges till it reaches
them : as it is only three years old, it need not bother about hospital connections until
next year! The Lincoln (Nebraska) Medical College deplores the fact that "there are
no poor in Lincoln ; hence students have no regular hours at any hospital, but de-
pend on cases as they turn up." The Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago has two
surgeons on the Cook County Hospital staff and a hospital of 60 beds; but the lay
superintendent "does n't believe in admitting students to the wards, so that there is
no regular way for them to see common acute diseases." The College of Physicians and
Surgeons, Denver, had access to a hospital of 28 beds, "certain ones free." The medi-
cal school at Little Rock that trades on the name of the University of Arkansas,
with which it is not even affiliated, is connected by a bridge with a city hospital
that has a capacity of from twenty-five to thirty-five patients, some of whom are oc-
casionally transported across into the amphitheater for operation or exhibition. The
clinics of the medical department of Willamette University (Salem, Oregon) are some-
what intangible: whether medical clinics are held, and where, "depends on the cases."
Not infrequently, schools advertise varied hospital connections that prove on inves-
tigation to be baseless or surreptitious. The Philadelphia College of Osteopathy claims
"the freedom of every important surgical clinic in the great medical colleges and hos-
pitals** of that city. Its hospital list is almost a page long; at the top stand the Uni-
versity and Jefferson Hospitals, to which its students can gain access only by conceal-
ing their identity. Rights or privileges they have none. The College of Physicians and
Surgeons of Boston announces that "equal opportunities and privileges are available
in the hospitals and institutions" of that city, — a flagrant misstatement; for the stu-
dents of that institution can on payment of fee attend only certain public clinics of
little value.

It is unnecessary to describe dispensary conditions in equal detail: naturally they
parallel the hospital situation. The same clinicians are responsible for both; in general,
the dispensaries would be likely, therefore, to reflect the samedegree of intelligence and
conscientiousness. A teaching dispensary needs ample space, equipment for making the
necessary diagnostic examinations and for taking simple therapeutic or surgical mea-
sures on the spot, a well organized staff, and a thorough record system, in the keep-
ing of which students serve as clerks. Voluminous attendance is an advantage, because
it permits selection in the first place, repeated illustration of important conditions in

HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL 121

the second. It may be set down as fundamental that a good dispensary will not run
itself; that nothing in the way of equipment will be used that is not actually there.
Economy of time is of such importance to both teachers and students that makeshift
inevitably means neglect. The well conducted dispensaries are the well equipped and
well organized dispensaries. The moment that equipment and organization fail, omis-
sion begins; no general rule prescribes where it will stop.

Vanderbilt Clinic — the dispensary attached to the College of Physicians and Sur-
geons,New York (Columbia University) — represents in respect to facilities the school
dispensary at its best. Teaching and treatment rooms, ample in size and equipment
from the standpoints of both students and patients, are provided; a clinical labora-
tory, with working space for every student on duty, is part of the building; close
correlation of physical examination and laboratory tests is feasible. An admirably
kept card index facilitates the keeping and use of data; there was an attendance in
1908 of almost 50,000 patients, making over 160,000 visits. The Johns Hopkins Dis-
pensary and the Lakeside Dispensary, operated by Western Reserve, are equally ef-
ficient. Less sumptuously housed, but adequate in all essential respects, are the dis-
pensaries of Cornell, New York University, the three Philadelphia schools, and those
open in Boston to Harvard and Tufts. The Polhemus Clinic controlled by the Long
Island College Hospital, the Homeopathic Medical Dispensary controlled by the
Boston University School of Medicine, must be included in the number of excel-
lently housed, equipped, and organized institutions of this kind.1 Yale has an excellent
building, which the application of a few thousand dollars yearly will readily convert
into an effective teaching adjunct.2

The first break comes in the care with which an abundant attendance is handled.
It would seem probable that, where the records are careless and incomplete, the
treatment of patients is likely to be hurried. The compilation and arrangement of
data slow the pace. They conduce to, and usually indicate, thoroughness and de-
liberation,— of fundamental importance if the student is to acquire a cautious habit.
Lack of system and superficiality tend to run together. Mere mass of material, swiftly
handled, may be useful to experienced practitioners in affording a variety of cases
among which occasionally something rare and interesting may turn up; but a stu-
dent who is in such a dispensary initiated into the routine of practice will be fortu-
nate ever to form methodical and thorough working habits. The Los Angeles clinical
branch of the University of California possesses a thoroughly admirable dispensary
building. Some of the rooms are well, some ill equipped ; the records are brief and
non-significant; no report is compiled; and the clinical laboratory, indispensable to
intelligent conduct of an out-patient department concerned to mould the student's

1 A few institutions possess small, moderately well equipped dispensaries, the conduct of which in-
dicates conscientious desire to do the best possible under the circumstances. Creditable examples are
the dispensary of Drake University (Des Moines) and the South End Dispensary used by the Albany
Medical School.

2 Denver and Gross also has an excellent dispensary building.

122 MEDICAL EDUCATION

habits and to do well by its patients, is both defective and disorderly: the surgical in-
strument case contained a tack-hammer, candle-ends, and other equally incongruous
miscellaneous objects among its instruments. In the medical department of the Uni-
versity of Cincinnati, there is a card index alphabetically arranged ; but the results
of the physical examination are not given, nor is there any note of the treatment
advised. The Starling-Ohio Medical College (Columbus) has a clean dispensary, with
adequate attendance, but no records in a proper sense at all; Halifax Medical Col-
lege requires attendance at a city dispensary that possesses little equipment for treat-
ment, still less for teaching; besides, the college has no voice in its conduct. The
students of Syracuse University also attend a city dispensary, but the head clinical
professors know nothing about what they get, or fail to get, there. Utterly destruc-
tive of good habits of observation or treatment must be a dispensary like the North
End Dispensary, Kansas City, attended by the students of the state university;
equipment and records are alike defective and confused. But there are others much
worse. Dispensary suites are found at the Barnes Medical College and the College of
Physicians and Surgeons (St. Louis). The former claims an annual attendance of
10,000 cases. Several rooms are provided, those devoted to branches like gynecology
and surgery being especially filthy. The equipment for internal medicine consists of
a small dirty room and a few miscellaneous bottles of proprietary drugs scattered on
the shelves of a bookcase. The dispensary of the College of Physicians and Surgeons
is of the same general character: the gynecological room, for example, is without a
window, water, or instruments; all is dark and dingy; there are no records of cases;
evasive answers are made to all questions. The fact is that a dispensary, costing little
to keep and nothing to run beyond the expense of a drug room, cannot answer for
teaching. Nor can youthful volunteers be usually relied on to form an efficient staff.
The expenditure on the score of dispensary must be greatly increased if the material
that presents itself is to be effectively handled in the training of students.

These schools shade off imperceptibly into those that make no pretense to a dis-
pensary at all, passing on the way institutions like Birmingham Medical College,
with a department both small and poor ; Augusta, without case records, not even
prescriptions put up in the pharmacy being numbered ; Portland (Oregon), claiming
two to seven a day; the Jenner (Chicago), claiming two to ten nightly; the Physio-
Medical (Chicago), with perhaps 250 all of last year; the Eclectic (New York), using
" what comes to the college ;" Charlotte, with loose unnumbered cards, mostly unin-
telligible, the prescription files showing an average of four or five a day. At the De-
troit Homeopathic College one finds prescriptions written on scraps of paper, envelope
backs, etc., with neither numbers nor names ; at the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical
College " medical cards are kept in pigeonholes that are cleaned out every spring."
The Kansas City Eclectic school is hopeful, if not ambitious : its dispensary atten-
dance averages now " about three daily ; " they hope to be able " to work it up to
six." The medical department of Bowdoin College uses a dispensary at Portland that

123

has an attendance of eight or ten a day : there are no case records, not even a pre-
scription file, no clinical laboratory, and not so much as a microscope on the premises.
The University of Alabama (Mobile) is the only small southern school with decent dis-
pensary quarters: an attractive wing has been recently built for the purpose by the
state.

There remains still the goodly number of schools that possess absolutely no dis-
pensary provision at all. With some of them we are already familiar as destitute of
hospital facilities. Without dispensary teaching of any kind, their students enter the
homes of the poor, — to officiate at childbirth, to care for wage- workers on whose well-
being depends the independence of the family. Meridian, the Georgia Eclectic, Wil-
lamette, the Lincoln Eclectic, the Hospital Medical College (Atlanta), the American
Medical College1 (St. Louis), the Chattanooga Medical College, Western University
(London, Ontario), are representative schools of this description. It is painful to in-
clude in essentially the same class the Medical College of the State of South Caro-
lina, at Charleston, which in lieu of a school dispensary refers to the out-patient work
of the Roper Hospital, with which its students have nothing at all to do. The two
Dallas schools — both long without a dispensary — are now starting one; Ensworth
Medical College at St. Joseph, Missouri, — a city of 130,000, — has practically no dis-
pensary at all; Epworth University (Oklahoma City) is in the same plight. Not a few
of these institutions might develop a fair dispensary service if their opportunities were
intelligently cultivated. For example, the University of Buffalo, in a city of 400,000,
has a wretched dispensary with a daily attendance of from twelve to fifteen, if one
can judge by sampling ; for tabulated records there are none. Such notes as exist are
brief and irregular. The poor do better to suffer in silence rather than to trust to the
haphazard student medication that such institutions now supply.

Astonishing to relate, the conditions that have been portrayed are defended. It is
alleged in extenuation that "our graduates pass state board examinations, get hos-
pital appointments, succeed in practice."" It is quite true: what of it? The argument
if valid would commit every school above the lowest to deliberate deterioration of
its facilities. Bowdoin makes light of a wretched dispensary on the grounds above
cited ; Dartmouth men succeed by the same tests without any dispensary at all ; ergo,
Bowdoin may safely forego dispensary teaching altogether. Is it not obvious that
both are mistaken? that they take hold of the situation at the wrong end? Medical
education is nowadays a definite problem, the factors to which, the end of which,
may be specifically stated. We know exactly what it drives at; we can determine to
a nicety the means necessary to reach the goal thus set up. It will shortly be demon-
strated that the number of doctors needed can in most sections be supplied with-
out material departure from the conditions agreed on. Why, then, should they be
abandoned ? In order that local doctors may continue to develop their professional

1 At this school one is naively told that they have "a dispensary room, and almost every day some
one comes."

124 MEDICAL EDUCATION

business? In order that "historic" schools may continue to produce a slightly amel-
iorated type of didactically trained physician?

As a matter of fact, many of the schools mentioned in the course of this recital
are probably without redeeming features of any kind. Their general squalor consorts
well with their clinical poverty: the class-rooms are bare, save for chairs, a desk, and
an occasional blackboard; the windows streaked with dust and soot. In wretched
amphitheaters students wait in vain for "professors," tardy or absent, amusing the
interval with ribald jest and song. The teaching is an uninstructive rehearsal of text-
book or quiz-compend : one encounters surgery taught without patient, instrument,
model, or drawing; recitations in obstetrics without a manikin in sight, — often
without one in the building. Third and fourth year men are frequently huddled to-
gether in the same classes. At the Memphis Hospital Medical College the students
of all four years attend the same classes in many of the subjects taught.

So much for the worst. It may be, however, that in the case of some schools with
weak hospitals and no dispensaries, the didactic instruction is vigorous, clean cut, in
its way effective. Such is the claim made at Dartmouth and at Bowdoin. Let us con-
cede its justice: what of it? Logically, the position of these institutions would be
stronger if they stuck to didactic instruction altogether. The moment that they
offer a course in clinical microscopy, they are committed to an entirely different scale
of values. For that they require patients whom they can observe closely and contin-
uously in order that laboratory data and bedside data may be put together as the
basis of a specific judgment. In other words, teaching must henceforth be concrete,
not abstract; clinical, not didactic. Good didactic instruction may indeed to some
extent accompany clinical teaching. We are not especially concerned to determine its
actual extent.1 Let it earn the school an extra credit, if you please. But its excellence
is no substitute for missing, defective, or badly balanced clinical opportunities.

1 The subjoined comparative schedule indicates the distribution between clinical and didactic work in
schools of various grades. This table is not alone conclusive ; for schools with weak clinical resources
are not infrequently without illustrative material, so that a clinical lecture may perforce turn into a
didactic lecture. Moreover, clinical instruction of the amphitheater type may, if the students are
few and the conditions good, be as useful as a bedside demonstration ; where, however, the students
are many and the conditions poor, it may be no better than a didactic exposition.

COMPARATIVE SCHEDULE, THIRD AND FOURTH YEARS

THIRD YEAR

WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

MEDICO-CIURUROICAL COLLEGE UNIVERSITY or ALABAMA

Subject

Hours

Subject

Hours

Subject

Hours

Subject

Hours

Inatomy

Did.

Lab.

Clin.

Pathology

Did.

Lab.

Clin.

Anatomy

Did.

Lab.

Clin.

Anatomy

Did.

Lab.

Chn.

Applied anatomy

96

Demonstrations

64

Applied anatomy

48

Anatomy of the

*athology and Preven-
tive Medicine

Applied patholo-
gy

32

64

Path. <t Bacteriology
Pathology

96

eye, ear, nose,
and throat

14

Gross pathological ana-

Bacteriology

64

Bacteriology

32

Pathology

tomy
Autopsy technique
Hygiene and preven-
tive medicine
yharmacology, Materia
Medico. <6 Therapeutics
Pharmacology
Therapeutics
Advanced prescription
writing
fedicine
Physical diagnosis
Medicine and clinical
medicine
Clinical microscopy

40

84
32

64
35

32
10

20
6

105

68
96

Pharmacology
Lectures
Therapeutics
Lectures and re-
citations
Medicine
Lectures and re-
citations
Section work : "J
hospital, ills- 1
pensary, and f
bedside J
Clinics
Diseases of chil-
dren

16
96
192

64

96
96

Surgical pathology
Autopsies
Therapeutics
Lectures and recita-
tions
Therapeutic clinics
Prescription dis-
pensing
Medicine
Med. & clinical med.
Pathological physi-
cal diagnosis
Children's diseases
Nervous and mental
diseases

32
128

64

32
32

i

16
64

32

64
i
32

32

Lectures, reci-
tations, and
laboratory
Therapeutics
Lectures and
recitations
Electro - thera-
peutics1
Medicine
Lectures and
clinics1
Physical diag-
nosis
Clinical diag-
nosis

28
56

56
28

112
56

56

112

Medical dispensary
forgery
History taking
Surgical diagnosis
Fractures and disloca-
tions
Genito-urinary surgery

12

20

18
12

24

Surgery
Lectures and re-
citations
Section work : ^
hospital, dis- 1
pensary, and f
bedside J

192

96
96

History taking
Surgery
Lectures and recita-
tions
Clinics
Operative surgery &
bandaging

192

i
50

128

Surgery
Lectures and
clinics1
Obstetrics
Lectures and
recitations1

38
112

112

Principles of surgery
Clinical surgery
Surgical pathology

64

60

64

Olinics
Operative sur-
gery

Dhatfifri fa

32

Orthopaedic surgery

Obstetrics and Oyne-
cology

32

Surgery dispensary
Eye, ear, nose, & throat

32

36
24

\jusiei 'iics
Lectures and re-
citations

96

Obstetrics
Gynecology

96
32

i
32

Obstetrics db Gynecology

Manikin work

8

Specialties

Obstetrics

64

Lying-in hospital

3
wks.

Ophthalmology

32

Gynecology

32

12

Oynecology

Laryngology

16

Recitations and

Otology

16

demonstrations

32

Dermatology

32

1 On clou ichedule

Medical Jurispru-
dence dk Toxicology '

32

at " Eltctrieity."
' Ciinict are the

tame for 3d and

1 Section work ; exact

ith year clauet.

numberofhoun not given.

3 Clatt tchedule

1 Part of thit teork it lab-

slwtct only one reci-

oratory.

tation per week.

FOURTH YEAR

WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

MKDICO-CHIRUROICAL COLLEGE

UNIVERSITY or ALABAMA

Subject

Hours

Subject

Hours

Subject

Hours

Subject

Hours

^athology & Preventive Med.

Did.

Clin.

Pathology

Did.

Clin.

Pathology

Did.

Clin.

Medicine

Did.

C/m.

Hygiene

24

Conference

32

Autopsies

i

Medical clinics1

112

Preventive medicine

20

Pathologic chemistry

6

Therapeutics

Nervous and mental

Medical jurisprudence

20

Autopsies

8

Applied therapeutics

i

diseases

42

fedicine

Therapeutics

Medicine

Tropical medicine

56

Medicine and clinical med.
Physical diagnosis

96

96
50

Conferences
Hygiene

32
32

Theory and practice
Clinical medicine

192

96

State medicine
Dispensary, all sub-

• _j_ ]

28

Ward clinics
Bedside work

40
32

Special subjects
Medicine

30

Medical dispensary
Diseases of children

i
88

jecis
Dermatology

28

28

Dispensary medicine
Clinical microscopy

i

50

Recitations & clinics
Section work

60

96
72

Pediatrics dispensary
Nervous and mental dis-

i

Surgery
Lectures and recita
lions

TO

Diseases of children

32

50

Neurology

32

12

eases

16

48

Plini/*a *

4 \f

Diseases of nervous system
Dermatology and syphilis
Medical ethics, economics,

32
64

23
27

Diseases of children
Mental diseases
Dermatology

48
16
32

20
16

Dermatology
Dispensary dermatology
Surgery

16

32

a

v^ 11I11C9

Operative surgery
Genito-urinary sur-
gery

112
84

OS

and Roentgenology

1

Surgery

Lectures and recitations

192

Hospital section

•v

Surgery

Recitations & clinics

92

96

Clinics

work1

70

Surgical diagnosis

12

Section work

72

Genito-urinary surgery

16

Obstetrics and Oyn-

Recitations

20

Genito-urinary sur-

Orthopaedic surgery

ecology

Clinical surgery

192

gery

32

24

Ophthalmology

Obstetrics lectures

56

Dispensary surgery

50

Orthopaedic surgery

32

4

Laryngology

Gynecology lectures

56

Ward work, clinical mi-"|
croscopy, and assign- -
ment to cases J
Ophthalmology
Eye dispensary
Ear, nose, and throat
Obstetrics and Gynecology
Obste tries

32
64

64

50
50

i

Obstetrics and Gfyneco-
logy
Obstetrics
Gynecology
Specialties
Ophthalmology
Otology

34

32

16

52

16
16

Otology
Obstetrics and Oynecology
Obstetrics
Clinical obstetrics and'
manikin work f
Gynecology
Gynecology ward clinics

64
64

i

32

>

Other Subjects
Hygiene and medi-
cal jurisprudence
Ear & nose diseases
Eye and throat dis-
eases
Ophthalmology

28
56

84

28

i

Laryngology

16

20

Clinical gynecology

64

1 Whfn material it available.

1 Clinics open to 3d £ ith
year clattet.

Dispensary gynecology

50

1 Section work; number of

-' Ciinict only for iih year

Number of hours varies.

hours not given.

clatt.

CHAPTER VIII
THE FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION

AN examination of the financial aspects of the American medical school will com-
pletely account for the conditions that have been described.1 It is universally con-
ceded that medical education cannot be conducted on proper lines at a profit, —
or even at cost; but it does not follow that it has therefore ceased to "pay." It is
commonly represented that medical schools are benevolent enterprises, to which self-
ish financial considerations are nowadays quite alien. Such is not even generally the
case. Our best medical schools are indeed far from self-supporting ; they absorb the
income of large endowments or burden seriously the general resources of their respec-
tive universities. But these institutions constitute but a small fraction of the medi-
cal schools of the country. The others pay in one or more of several ways, if " pay-
ing" is understood to mean that the fees do more than meet the expense of running
the school. This use of terms is entirely justifiable; for if fees alone are inadequate
to meet the running expenses of an up-to-date medical school, then the difference
between actual expenditure on instruction, with its essential incidentals, and the
total fee income of the school is profit, whatever the use to which it is applied. In
the worst cases this sum is great and goes into the pockets of the teachers ; in many
others, it may not be large in any single year, though its total over a stretch of
years may be quite sufficient to have altered materially the complexion of the in-
stitution. In these schools an annual balance to the good is obtained for distribu-
tion by slighting general equipment, by overworking laboratory teachers, by wholly
omitting certain branches, by leaving certain departments relatively undeveloped,
or by resisting any decided elevation of standards. In one or more of these ways, for
example, not to go outside the Empire State, the Albany Medical School is enabled
to pay some $500 a year apiece to otherwise well-to-do clinicians; the University of
Buffalo to distribute "nominal sums" of $1000 to a number of professors in large
regular practice ; the Long Island College Hospital to apportion a substantial sum
out of the fee income in tithes among the faculty; and the University and Bellevue
Hospital Medical College to pay out of fees salaries to some of the most successful
practitioners in New York city, while the laboratory branches still lack anything
like uniform development. More favorable, but still by no means beyond the reach
of legitimate criticism, is the case of schools that, admitting the impossibility of
providing satisfactory instruction at cost, nevertheless save from current use a not
inconsiderable amount to be applied to paying for buildings or plant instead of
dividends. Every such saving is necessarily at the expense of instruction ; that is
to say, if every dollar taken in were consumed in current teaching, unfortunate make-
shifts would still have to be employed. With every dollar less than total fee income
1See appendix for table showing income of medical schools.

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 127

used in providing teaching, the quality of instruction is still further impaired. As
the country becomes able and willing to support at a loss the number of schools
needed, the ethical justification of other schools that must pay a profit — even though
that profit go into buildings and equipment — becomes decidedly dubious.

Most of the existing medical school plants have been provided in this manner ;
quite commonly those who have participated in the operation fail to reflect on its
significance. For if a good medical education costs more than the student pays in
fees, then, even though an adequate plant has been provided in advance, his instruc-
tion must at some essential points be curtailed if additional income is not availa-
ble. If, however, fees must provide either initial plant or plant extension, it is clear
that proper teaching must be still further refused during the years when fees are
employed to accumulate equipment. Historically that is the explanation of our
extensive medical school plants in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louisville,
Chicago: instruction far below what was at the moment scientifically feasible was
given to the current student body, in order that their fees might be used to provide
a better basis for a body of students that would come along in the future. Didactic
lectures were given in 1890, to pay for a building in which laboratory instruction
could be given in 1900. As conditions improved, one laboratory was put into opera-
tion, while a fee surplus was accumulated to install a second. Before the day of
medical school support by endowment or taxation, such procedure compared very
favorably indeed with the more common practice of doing nothing for the student
of to-day and as little as possible for the student of to-morrow. The point now to
aim at is the development of the requisite number of properly supported institutions
and the speedy demise of all others.

In varying degrees, contented acceptance of these conditions goes along with the
survival, however insidiously, of the notion that medical education, whatever else it
may be, is something of a business, too. It is questionable whether this notion can ever
be uprooted, so long as several competing schools in the same or in adjacent towns
solicit patronage that can never again be sufficient in volume to satisfy them all.
The essence of a business transaction consists in spending less in producing an article
than is paid for it over the counter, how much less depending now on the proximity
and competitive eagerness of other dealers, now on the wariness and number of the
customers. It matters not that in this instance the article is education, the counter
the registrar's latticed window, the profit going in extreme cases in large sums into
a doctor's pocket, in the best cases in smaller sums into bricks and microscopes. If,
in other words, medical education is a social function, it is not a proper object for
either institutional or individual exploitation. Society ought to provide means for
its support according to the best light obtainable ; and the law should make it im-
possible for any person or institution to engage in it on any other than the best
terms that society is in position to enforce. Great departures from this principle were
at one time inevitable: the country was bound to have doctors; it had to take them

128 MEDICAL EDUCATION

as it could get them. They need never have been so badly trained as most of them
were. But on that point it is useless to dwell. Important for us it is to ascertain
whether in this year of grace, 1910, it is still necessary to put up with schools that
are seriously defective; and if so, to what extent, and how much longer.

What does it really cost to carry on a medical school that construes its duty in
social terms? Initial investment may be put to one side. That, the college income
cannot furnish; fees cannot provide buildings and equipment in the first place, or pay
for them subsequently in instalments. The medical school must start with an ade-
quate plant, laboratory and clinical, debt free. The value of these plants may vary
within very wide limits; size, style, the ratio of teaching to research, all bear on the
problem of initial cost. In a measure it is a question of taste, how much one will ex-
pend on buildings and equipment. Essential, however, to every venture are class-rooms
with the essential teaching paraphernalia, class laboratories in each of the sciences
with individual equipment, private quarters with requisite appurtenances for each
member of the teaching staff. These facilities cannot be dispensed with because the
numbers to be handled are small. The several items may be scaled down, but they
do not disappear. Fee income, confessedly inadequate to keep such a plant running,
cannot be called on to provide it. The plant, therefore, is taken for granted before
we even begin to consider what it costs to teach medicine.

For the sake of simplicity we shall continue the demarcation between laboratory
and clinical branches. At present the cost of maintaining the hospital is not usually
a school encumbrance. Whether or not it ought to be must be decided as the case
arises. Western Reserve is in position to avoid the expense; the University of Michi-
gan must carry it. In general, the school obligation on this point has been shirked.
The intolerable compromises described in the preceding chapter are employed in con-
sequence. Nothing will perhaps go further towards destroying superfluous schools or
preventing new ones than correct ideas as to necessary hospital conditions. It is quite
impossible that most schools should either possess their own hospitals or effect a satis-
factory relation with hospitals belonging to other people. At the moment, possession
rather than diplomacy seems in most places to furnish the only satisfactory solution,
— and possession necessitates an immense increase of the school budget. Meanwhile,
this point will not be obscured by provisional separation of the two budgets ; for this
manner of presentation an additional reason is found in the fact that, to a varying
extent, the hospital may be made to carry itself without derogating from its peda-
gogical purpose.

A schematic outline of the laboratory years calls for at least five departments,
(1) anatomy, (2) physiology and pharmacology, (3) chemistry, (4) pathology, (5) bac-
teriology and hygiene, subject, within limits, to rearrangement. The ultimate cost of
the entire school will not be greatly affected by such redistribution. In their internal
economy the departments will follow the same general lines. There will be a profes-
sor, devoting himself wholly to teaching and research, and in position to do both;

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 129

assistants varying in number with the size of the classes and the extent to which the
institution is minded to encourage original activity ; a departmental helper attached
to each department ; preferably, too, a technician and a mechanic, who will, however,
in the end more than save their cost.

The budget of a department thus organized in a medical school of, say, 250 stu-
dents, favorably situated, would assign $3000 to $5000 a year to its head, $2000 to
$2500 to a first assistant, $1000 to $2000 to additional assistants, $750 to a helper,
and $2500 to $5000 to maintenance, including books, new apparatus, material, ani-
mals, etc. The total, ranging from $9250 to $15,250, still omits a proportionate
share of the general overhead expense of administering the institution. A university
department in one of the fundamental medical sciences, none too elaborately pro-
vided, cannot, then, on the average be effectively maintained for less than $10,000 to
$15,000 per annum. At the moment, of course, the departments are not all equally
expensive. Anatomy and pathology cost more than pharmacology and bacteriology.
But the average is not thus seriously disturbed ; for the former will extend above the
line as much as the latter can be reduced below it. All of them, as they are devel-
oped, tend to cost more. Where the sum named has not yet been reached, the ten-
dency towards it is unmistakable. It is, of course, true that fairly good instruction is
at times furnished more cheaply. In the small two-year schools situated in small
towns, the professors receive less, sometimes much less, than the sums stated; and the
expense of maintenance does not at times exceed a few hundred dollars per annum.
But these departments cannot continue on this makeshift basis: they are now manned
by young men, who, finding themselves doomed to routine and sterility, begin fight-
ing at once to get away. The teacher who is content under such circumstances will
soon be out of date; and the instruction, however conscientious, will be decidedly
limited in range. To live, these departments must be much more liberally supported;
and in the small two-year schools where this has been the case — notably at Cornell
and Wisconsin — the departmental budgets correspond pretty closely to our present
estimate. The organization of a department of, say, physiology on the minimum
basis of efficiency, for 25 students or less, would require, after providing the initial
plant, $3000 for the professor, $1000 for his assistant, $750 expense on the score of
material for class use, $250 to keep some little research going, $300 for books and
periodicals, $600 for a janitor, — a total of $5900 for the routine teaching of a few
students under undesirable limitations. As it is clear that there is no justification
just now for the existence of medical schools that are incapable of greatly bettering
the type, it follows that schools unable or indisposed to spend the requisite sums lack
a valid reason for being. We may then assume that the five departments of a properly
organized medical school, capable of handling 125 students, in its first two years can
hardly be properly sustained on a total budget of less than from $50,000 to $75,000
annually. If, now, the student pays $150 a year for tuition, there will be an annual
deficit ranging from $31,250 to $56,250 a year. Not all the medical schools that are

ISO MEDICAL EDUCATION

alive to their responsibility are, as we shall see, at this moment able to provide on this
scale for each of the fundamental departments; but they are in no doubt that these
departments need such support; and they are straining every effort to procure it for
them.1

On the clinical side, the problem is more complicated. We have seen that the re-
lation of the medical school to its hospital must be of the same kind as its relation
to its laboratories. But laboratories exist only for school purposes; the hospital dis-

1 A comparison of the estimates above given with corresponding budgets in German universities is
highly suggestive. Despite the fact that the cost of apparatus, supplies, etc., is much lower in Germany
than here, the sums spent in various universities on laboratory maintenance are as follows :
KONIGSBERG (170 medical students) BBESLAU (189 medical student*)

Anatomy 16,349 marks Anatomy 26,618 marks

Pathology 9,860 Pathology 14,932

BERLIN (1107 medical students) GOTTINGEN (189 medical students)

Anatomy 57,436 marks Anatomy 19,850 marks

Physiology 89,766 Physiology 9,606

(From Etat des Ministeriums der Unterrichts- und Medizinal Angelegenheiten, 1909, Beilage 6.)

Still more significant is the ratio between expenditure for salaries and that for laboratory main-
tenance, and the steady encroachment of the latter : out of every 100 marks spent in German uni-
versities, there went in

1868 45.95 marks to salaries 37.07 marks to laboratories

1878 41.94 40.46

1888 36.00 47.18

1902 29.46 53.77 "

1906 27.93 55.45

(From Preussische Statistik, 204: Slatistik der preuuischen Landes Universitdten, 1908, p. 7.)

Finally, the actual sums spent on salaries and laboratories respectively tell the same significant
story:
Total expenditure in Prussian universities in

1868 1,786,108 marks for salaries 1,440,955 marks for laboratories

1878 2,959,187 2,959,103

1888 3,305,125 4,331,649

1898 3,499,785 6,094,316

1906 4,308,980 " 8,554,581 "

(Ibid., p. 14.)

That is, in 38 years, total salaries have increased 141 per cent, total laboratory expense, 490 per cent.
In the same period, the total attendance of medical students in the same universities has risen 113
per cent (from 2771 in winter semester, 1868, to 5903, winter semester, 1906).

Paulsen (German Universities, translated by Thilly, p. 219, note) quotes from the Rector's Address
of Adolph Wagner in 1896 :

"Expenditures for salaries and institutes in the University of Berlin show the following growth :
Year Salaries Institutes

1811 116,550 marks (71.8 per cent) 39,294 marks (24.0 per cent)

1834 193,650 (64.6 " " ) 78,434 (26.2 " ' )

1880 321,000 (52.8 " " ) 267,000 (40.1 ' ' )

1896-7 865,000 (30.9 " " ) 1,481,000 (52.9 " ' )"

All the seminaries in the mental sciences (there are 18) cost 17,650 marks annually; the 15 natural-
scientific institutes and collections cost 379,798 marks; the 10 medical-scientific institutes 190,054
marks; the 10 clinical institutes, 617,691 marks.

The publications of the Prussian government mentioned above are models, which we would do well
to adopt. They enable us to follow in minute detail the educational developments of the last seventy-
five years, with their social implications. The American student of similar problems deals with chaos.
It is difficult to obtain definite and complete statements from any one institution ; and quite impos-
sible to compare data from several institutions without exhaustive inquiry by way of ascertaining
whether they cover the same ground. The German statistics prove clearly, however, the point at
issue, i.e., the rapidly increasing cost of properly organized medical education.

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 131

charging simultaneously a philanthropic office may, as we have seen, be provided for
independently of school funds and yet be as intimately a part of the educational or-
ganization as if teaching were its main purpose. The school will invariably have to
equip and maintain its laboratories; the hospital may be separately financed without
burden to the medical school. Further, the initial cost of the hospital establishment
may vary within large limits : a plain, but serviceable structure, capable of accommo-
dating 200 patients, with proper teaching facilities, may be erected for a few hundred
thousand dollars; or it may cost millions. The cost of maintenance also fluctuates
considerably according to situation and scale of support. In the city of New York, it
is roughly estimated that it takes $1000 to maintain one bed for one year; a 200 bed
hospital may thus readily involve an annual expenditure of $150,000 and upwards.
This sum may be reduced by profits derived from pay patients, or by small contribu-
tions from charity patients. The extent to which the provision of proper clinical
opportunities falls upon the medical school varies, then, from place to place. It is
therefore not included in the schematic school budget we are preparing; but it is
important to emphasize clearly that where independent endowment or state support
does not furnish the medical school with a hospital in which it is thoroughly at home,
the burden falls at once upon the school. The substitutes, makeshifts, and compromises
now so widely employed in the United States do not relieve the medical schools of
their responsibility.

From the standpoint of the medical school, it is perhaps immaterial how its hos-
pital is supported. But it would be unfair not to point out briefly in passing
that certain larger considerations give great importance to the source of hospital sup-
port. The hospital in the United States is not necessarily privately managed because
privately supported, or publicly managed because publicly supported : it may be pri-
vately managed, even though in large measure publicly supported. The teaching hos-
pitals connected with the Philadelphia schools and with the proprietary schools of
Baltimore are of this description. In respect to management they are private con-
cerns; but they have received large lump subsidies from the state for both buildings
and support. It is not the sole objection to this policy that it strengthens proprie-
tary medical schools, though that is surely a legitimate criticism. More serious is the
general demoralization that log-rolling always entails. Schools and hospitals, com-
peting in all other matters, join hands in assaulting the state treasury; for coopera-
tive action increases the total largess to be divided. The state or city can indeed
legitimately aid medical education by completely handing over to high-grade medi-
cal schools the ward service in hospitals financially managed by the proper state or
municipal authorities. The public interest would be promoted, not injured, if, for
example, Cornell, Columbia, and New York University were each left in unfettered
possession of its division at Bellevue (New York) ; there is no possible source of de-
moralization there. The Pennsylvania plan, however, tends to transfer the making of
appropriations and the accounting for the same from the hands of state officials to

132 MEDICAL EDUCATION

private parties whose common interest it is to increase appropriations and to reduce
oversight.1 The size of the appropriation is determined to greater or less degree by
the violence of the onset There is no fixed relation between the charity work done
and the amount asked or secured.* In pursuance of that policy the state of Pennsyl-
vania last year granted out of the public treasury to private and semi-private hos-
pitals $4,404,500.

However the hospital and dispensary are supported, the teaching budget of the
clinical years is necessarily a charge upon the funds of the medical school. The pro-
fessor of medicine in the medical school will be physician-in-chief to the hospital;
surgeon, obstetrician, pediatrist, will likewise occupy the same dual relation. The
university hospital will be their laboratory ; their salaries will protect them against
the distractions of successful practice, be that practice general or consultant, — for
a thriving consultation business may prove just as fatal to scientific productivity as
any other form of immersion in routine. The clinical departments must embody the
same ideals as pathology or physiology in respect to teaching and research; they
require, then, the same organization and support. The laboratory service must be ex-
tended for them. For the investigator in internal medicine needs not only a clinic,
but a laboratory, in whose activities the bedside problem and the fundamental
sciences are brought together. The professors of pathology, physiology, physiologi-
cal chemistry, work on broad lines. The clinician applies what he obtains from them
to problems that are narrower in compass. Neither the clinical laboratories, where
routine examinations are carried on, nor the fundamental scientific laboratories,
serve precisely the needs of the investigating clinician, though the latter are in the
most intimate cooperation with him.

What may be called the theory of virtual endowment deserves a word at this
point. Let us suppose that ten practitioners give their professorial services gratis.
Undoubtedly their ethical position is better than that of practitioner teachers who
draw dividends. They contend, however, that their services constitute an endowment.
Paid teachers would get, say, $3000 each. The $30,000 saved represents five per cent
on $600,000. It is argued that the school is just where it would be if it had an en-
dowment of something more than a half-million. Sanguine calculators of this type
occasionally run the virtual endowments up to two or three millions. But virtual
endowment is a poor substitute for good bonds. The volunteer teacher may begin
well ; but as between teaching and practice, the former must always get the worst of
it. Slipshod dispensaries, imperfect hospital records, general clinical barrenness, tell
the tale.

1 Experts are of one mind as to the viciousness of this policy. See, for example. Report on Subtidiet,
National Conference of Charities and Corrections, hem at Washington, D.C., May 9-15, 1901.

•The amounts secured vary from 12 cents to $2 a day for free patients, according to the efficacy of
the hospital "pull." In New York city " pull " is eliminated : the hospital is paid a fixed sum for ser-
vice rendered. Nevertheless, even this method of procedure may have unfortunate educational con-
sequences,—for it enabled the Brooklyn Post-Graduate Medical School to start.

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 133

The modern medical establishment that spends $50,000 or $75,000 upon its fun-
damental laboratories will, if it is to be equally productive in clinical medicine,
spend an equal sum on teaching and investigation during the latter two years, —
quite apart from the current maintenance of hospital and dispensary. That is to
say, $100,000 to $150,000 will be required at the start to pay the minimum cost of
a four-year school of medicine accommodating 250 students and consistently organ-
ized along sound lines on both laboratory and clinical sides. The outlay will increase,
not decrease, as the school grows, not in number, but in scope and power. The pro-
posed budget may look formidable just now, when compared with the scant provision
that has been generally made for medical education in this country under men many
of whom have had no real appreciation of what good medical training is, or costs;
but as public sentiment and educational intelligence develop, the suggested scale will
appear not only modest, but insufficient.

The fees received from such a student body would amount to some $40,000; so
that it may be fairly estimated that in such an institution fees will at the utmost
pay little more than one-third of the expense, provided that proper hospital and
dispensary facilities are already supported by endowment or otherwise. A com-
forting notion is prevalent that "in time" this proportion will rise, and that losses
in attendance due to elevation of standards will eventually be " made up." There is
no warrant for this belief. Institutions which have always, or long, operated on a
high standard, and thus command an established public, find that expense tends to
increase more rapidly than fee income. They persistently seek additional funds that
may enable them to push ahead. The number of high standard schools supported
will tend to be in some definite relation to the public need; there will be no such
disproportion between number and need on a high, as there has been on the low,
basis. In other words, the total enrolment will shrink; it will tend to concentrate
in fewer schools. Under these circumstances schools which have long enjoyed a com-
paratively low-grade patronage must cut loose from their past, and begin to culti-
vate a new clientele. They will probably make slow headway in recovering from the
initial shock. Most of them must expire or "merge" before their independent salva-
tion can possibly be worked out. Our conclusion is that established schools, secure of
their public on a sound basis, may count on fees to the extent of one-third to one-
half of the expenditure required to conduct a good school of modern medicine; and
that as the department becomes more homogeneously developed, the fees will tend
to do even less.

It is interesting to compare this hypothetical budget as a whole, and by separate
departments, with the actual outlay of our best schools. The Johns Hopkins most
nearly represents desirable conditions; for there a teaching hospital belonging to
the medical school is supported by adequate and separate endowment, so that clinical
facilities impose no burden on the funds of the medical school proper. Moreover,
there from the first clinical teachers have been salaried and, in a measure, withdrawn

184 MEDICAL EDUCATION

from general practice. The actual cost of conducting the Johns Hopkins Medical
School, with 297 students, is something over $100,000 a year, not including, how-
ever, the salaries of clinical professors, which are in this case paid out of the hospital
funds. Including these, the total outlay would considerably exceed our estimate.
Tuition fees are about one-half of this amount. The Harvard budget runs higher,
$251,389, much more than double the income in fees from its 285 students; Michigan,
with 389 students, spends $83,000 on its department of medicine and surgery, and
$70,000 more on the university hospital; Columbia, with 312 students, requires
$239,072 for the College of Physicians and Surgeons, including the Sloane Maternity
Hospital and the Vanderbilt Clinic; Cornell (207 students) expends $209,888 at
New York and $32,840 more at Ithaca, and gets back $24,410 in fees. The Toronto
(592 students) medical budget is about $85,000, as against $64,500 received in fees;
McGill (328 students), $77,000, as against $43,750 received in fees; the University
of Minnesota, $71,336, as against $16,546 received in fees. More modest establish-
ments, working towards the same ideals, make a similar exhibit: eighteen years ago
the total budget of the Yale Medical School was $10,000^ it is now $43,311,— three
times the amount received in tuition fees and confessedly inadequate to the aspira-
tions and capacity of the medical faculty. Cornell spends at Ithaca, on a two-year
course, $32,840, not including the cost of heating, lighting, administration, etc.

Few of these institutions have developed all departments equally. Even the labo-
ratory branches are not as yet all of the same type. Relatively few even of the best
schools are able to cultivate pharmacology to any considerable extent ; the same is
true of preventive medicine. On the clinical side, makeshifts of which we cannot be
too impatient are all but universal. In general, even where intelligent ideals prevail,
resources do not suffice for an all-round organization. Wherever a department has
been acceptably cared for, the expenditure is apt to exceed our schematic estimate :a
Johns Hopkins now spends $16,750 a year on anatomy, $14,171 on pathology (not
counting $4791 spent on the clinical laboratory), $13,246 on physiology and phy-
siological chemistry. Columbia spends $29,259 on anatomy, $18,400 on pathology,8
$17,838 on physiology. Cornell (New York) spends $37,000 on pathology,* histology,
and bacteriology, $15,895 on anatomy, $14,940 on physiology. These appropriations
are not extravagant. On the contrary, they are closely approached — sometimes ex-
ceeded— wherever modern methods are effectively employed: at Ithaca, Cornell (18
students) spends $9500 on anatomy and $13,500 on physiology and pharmacology;
New York University (408 students) spends $15,000 on pathology; Washington

1 Graham Lusk: "Medical Education," Journal Amor. Med. Ann., vol. Hi. p. 1230.

1 The budgets that follow are not exactly comparable, for the lines are not always drawn in exactly
the same way. Nevertheless they represent nearly enough the same thing to illustrate the point under
discussion. Unfortunately college accounting does not as yet enable us to say how much goes into
ordinary undergraduate teaching, how much into research, etc.

* Including clinical pathology, $26,800.
4 Excluding clinical pathology.

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 135

University, St. Louis (178 students), spends $9640 for anatomy, $8550 for physio-
logy and pharmacology; the University of Wisconsin (49 students) spends SI 0,000
for anatomy and $8100 for physiology. Anatomy costs the University of Michigan
$14,300 a year, and the University of Iowa $13,525. Champions of cheapness allege
that large sums are needed only for research, where medicine is taught to college
graduates who afterwards practise in large cities ; but Michigan and Iowa spend these
sums in behalf of high school boys who after graduation from the medical school re-
turn to the simple surroundings amidst which they grew up. New York University
operates also with high school boys, and is mainly a teaching school. Where clinical
medicine is on the proper basis, the same result emerges: at Tulane, for example
(439 students), the department, recently reorganized on modern lines, requires $9100
for its support. The University of Michigan uses $7830 in medicine, $9405 in
surgery. Every one of the important subjects must of course very soon be pro-
vided on an adequate scale; for in every acceptable medical school, though large
individual variations must occur, the movement to treat the main clinical divisions
similarly will not stop. A simple process of multiplication will then give the mini-
mum cost of maintaining a medical establishment in which all the essential sub-
jects are adequately, even though not homogeneously, developed. Endowment
or taxation alone can meet this burden, — and endowment and taxation are feasi-
ble only if medical education is carried on not only in, but by the university. For
of course a medical school supported by fees is just as fettered inside, as it would
be outside, the university. Its ideals may be higher ; its fee income may be more in-
dependently expended. But in no case are the fees adequate to support all the es-
sential departments on a substantial basis. As a rule, these schools "feature" one or
two branches ; the others pine. The best developed departments show what all ought
to be: pathology at New York University, anatomy at Jefferson Medical College,
are really strong departments; they belong to institutions dependent on fees; but to
provide them, other departments must be denied anything like equal opportunity to
expand.

Of course it is not to be supposed that the most expensive teaching is the best;
that a department that costs $20,000 is necessarily twice as good as one that spends
$10,000; it may be both scientifically and pedagogically inferior. It remains true,
however, that in general the equipment and conduct of laboratories are costly ; that
professorial salaries are rising; that a productive teacher needs competent assistants,
expensive apparatus, material, etc., and a certain margin, in case an unforeseen turn
necessitate an unusual outlay. The scientist financially hampered so as to be in-
capable of following out surprises may miss the most valuable result of his tedious
labors.

Important is it to observe that the expense does not diminish pan passu with the
attendance. The formation of two-year schools has recently proceeded apace, many
of them feebly equipped and poorly sustained; their initial plant costs little; their

1S6 MEDICAL EDUCATION

total budgets are but a few thousand dollars.1 A few dollars are expended for books;
animals are provided in a gingerly manner; pathological material is small in amount,
and comes as a gratuity from distant schools whose needs have been previously sup-
plied; apparatus barely suffices for routine work; no helpers relieve the single de-
partmental teacher of menial drudgery. These schools are of course scientifically
sterile; as such, they must rapidly become antiquated, for they are situated in out-
of-the-way places and their staff has but little intercourse with active centers. It
seems hardly justifiable to start such ventures merely to meet institutional com-
petition. The two-year school can doubtless make good where, as in Wisconsin,
liberal support overcomes at many points the defects due to isolation; the heavy
charges incurred, however, ought to be seriously pondered by those whose less ample
means forbid anything like so adequate an appropriation.

It is now clear that medicine cannot be, and is not, properly taught on the basis
of receipts. We have at this date 30-odd schools, all university departments, whose
annual budgets call, for sums considerably in advance of their receipts from fees. As
these institutions will in number and facilities undoubtedly soon be equal to the
task of producing physicians enough to supply the need, the coil is tightening
around schools not yet in position to devote even all their fees to instruction. Well
known institutions can still be cited, whose instruction as offered costs the school
less than the fees paid in, — a balance being available for buildings, improvements,
or for debt originally incurred for plant. Large receipts mean in most instances*
low standards, — standards below the four-year high school basis. In order to secure
a balance, economies must be effected, as has been already pointed out, at the expense
of teaching, by inadequate equipment, uneven development, lack of full-time profes-
sors, reliance upon necessarily incompetent student assistants, absence of helpers,
employment of volunteers in the dispensary, etc. Tufts College Medical School, with
an income of 859,093, is paying off in annual instalments a debt incurred for the
building it now occupies; Jefferson Medical College, with receipts of SI 02,995, must
incidentally accumulate a fund to retire a large mortgage. The medical department
of Northwestern University must apply its surplus to the discharge of debts incurred
for buildings and plant. Vanderbilt University, having invested $83,000 in a medi-
cal department, compels the department out of its fees (about $25,000 a year) to
pay all its own running expenses, something on the original purchase price, and six
per cent interest on the unpaid balance. The University of Maryland, the College of
Physicians and Surgeons of Baltimore, the Starling-Ohio (Columbus), pursue substan-
tially the same policy.

1 The minimum outlay, ordinary working efficiency being considered, for a department of physiology
is given on page 199. It is questionable whether just now an institution is justified in undertaking the
work if it is unable to do more than this minimum. Only a decided probability of increased resources
in the future warrants the step.

2 Rush (Chicago) is the only exception. No other high standard school contains over 300 students ;
most of them have a comparatively small enrolment

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 137

Of our 155 medical schools, 120-odd depend on fees alone. Of these, there are better
and worse : the former using the fees as far as they go to provide either several labo-
ratory branches decently, or two or three well; the latter devoting but a part, often
a small part, of the fee income to pedagogical use, distributing the rest among the
teachers, who are in such cases always practising physicians.

The ethics of the case are clear. Let us grant that in the hope of ultimately get-
ting to a sounder basis, it may have been justifiable for the more prosperous fee-
supported schools, whose total income is large enough to do something, to fight for
survival. Surely they were, and are, morally bound meanwhile to furnish the best
medical teaching procurable with such income as they enjoy. Their practitioner
teachers were all the time profiting indirectly by their school connection; and this
would suffice, if their motives were really as altruistic as is commonly alleged.
Meanwhile, laboratories can be kept decent and laboratory teaching can as a rule be
thorough only if full-time instructors are employed. These teachers have no income
but their salaries. The medical school must therefore devote its fees primarily to
paying them and to giving them the necessary facilities. Though the fee-supported
school do this unreservedly, it will none the less omit part of its duty, because fees can-
not support a complete set of laboratories efficiently organized. The school is therefore
not justified in cutting out one or more of its possible laboratories in order to pay its
clinical teachers. It must not only use its fees to pay for the right kind of laboratory
instruction, but it must organize as many such laboratories as fees will support before
paying anything to the clinical teachers, who profit indirectly nevertheless. A school
may not be justified in existing even on this basis; that is, if the demand for doctors
can be met by institutions that can do better for their students, there is no need to
put up with even so altruistic a compromise. Surely an institution that is not will-
ing to do so much as this has absolutely no defense unless a section is so hard run
for doctors that it must take them on any terms upon which they can be procured.
Such is not the case at this writing in any part of the United States or Canada. The
younger men utilized in the dispensary ought probably to be treated on the same basis.
For the dispensary is usually turned over to young men still struggling for a liveli-
hood. A small annual stipend would go far to get from them the best service they
are capable of rendering. To these two purposes the fee-supported school is in
conscience bound to apply its income. As far as fees reach, orderly, even though
modest, scientific departments and a well conducted dispensary service should be pro-
vided and paid for.

A few schools have squarely met their responsibility in this matter, and with re-
sults that prove them deserving of additional support. The medical department of
Syracuse University has a total fee income of $28,861, which is spent on the sci-
entific branches ; the plant is not elaborate, but it is effective, attractive, and con-
scientiously managed. Within less than a year, the medical department of the
University of Pittsburgh has come under complete university control. Prior to that

138 MEDICAL EDUCATION

time it was a highly prosperous concern to its managers; nowhere in the country
were worse conditions found. Now, as then, the school has only its fees for support;
but they have this year gone into laboratories instead of into professorial pockets:
with a result that is hardly less than a transformation. Full-time professors of pa-
thology, physiology, and other branches have brought order out of chaos. The entire
atmosphere of the institution has been clarified : students may be found actually
studying, in the room in which under other conditions last year "four dozen wooden
chairs were broken up "in boisterous horse-play. The medical department of Boston
University, with a total income of $12,762, makes a decent and attractive showing
in a simple way in its laboratories of bacteriology, pathology, physiology, etc.
Highly creditable is the record of Meharry Medical College, the colored school at
Nashville ; for there the teachers, though practising physicians, are poor men : of the
total income of $23,946, the salary list gets only $9665. A violent contrast is af-
forded by Shaw University (Raleigh, N. C.), another school for colored men, whose
teachers are, however, white physicians: its income from fees is $2846; a few contri-
butions increase the total income (not counting the board of students) to $4721 ;
the teachers just referred to draw out $4737. In consequence the school has practi-
cally no outfit.

In the majority of the larger schools dependent on fees, an opposite policy is pur-
sued. The laboratories are slighted or starved; the dispensary is neglected in order
that dividends or salaries, running sometimes as high as $1000, may be paid to pre-
cisely those faculty members who need it least. The Albany Medical School — nomi-
nally affiliated with Union College — has a fee income of $20,276. Associated with
it is the Bender Laboratory, where practically all its laboratory teaching except
chemistry and anatomy is carried on. The school appropriates niggardly sums to
provide for the teaching of pathology and bacteriology by the overworked and under-
helped chief of the Bender Laboratory ; the laboratory has struggled hard, and not
unsuccessfully, to be productive at the same time; but it has accomplished, whether
in teaching or in research, but a fraction of what it would have achieved, had not a
large part of the college receipts been distributed in sums approximating $500 each
to fifteen members of the school faculty. At Buffalo similar conditions exist. The
dispensary is utterly neglected ; some laboratory subjects are unprovided, others are
slighted, in order that a "nominal" salary of $1000 may be paid in real money to
some of the leading practitioners in the town. This institution collects $4608 in
laboratory fees and spends $1105 in carrying the laboratories on. Brooklyn fairly
repeats Albany. There the Hoagland Laboratory relieves the Long Island College
Hospital of certain subjects ; the rest are omitted, for the fees that might furnish
them are distributed among well-to-do clinical teachers. Bowdoin, with a total avail-
able income of $15,230, appropriates $200 for the maintenance of the bacteriologi-
cal laboratory, $50 for the physiological laboratory, $200 for chemistry, and $200
for books, as against $12,225 for salaries to men, not one of whom gives his whole

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 139

time to medical education. At Halifax, the fee income is some $5000 a year and the
government makes an appropriation of $1200, — a total of $6200. The faculty ap-
portions this sum as follows : three-fourths of the fees are divided among the teach-
ers; one-fourth of the fees plus the government subsidy must carry all other expense, —
heat, light, janitor service, laboratory maintenance : the disgraceful condition of the
premises follows as a matter of course. The Hahnemann of Philadelphia, with esti-
mated receipts of $18,500, distributes $11,000 among teaching practitioners and
spends perhaps $1500 on equipment and $500 for laboratory material. Advertising
and commencement exercises — the latter only another form of advertising — often
cost these institutions more than their laboratories. One large eastern institution
expends $4700 on publicity, as against $3500 on its laboratories; another — a New
York school, this — $1500 on publicity, $1100 on laboratories; another, $2100 on ad-
vertising, $1160 on laboratories; another — this time in the south — $1000 on adver-
tising, $500 on laboratories, "including repairs."1

The conclusion, then, is irresistible that these schools, far from being the benevo-
lent enterprises that they are alleged to be, still "pay,1" both directly and indirectly;
nor can a genuine altruistic motive be made out for any medical school which does
not consistently devote its entire income to providing decent facilities and adequate
instruction in the laboratories, where the teachers, if competent, must rely wholly on
their salaries. Clinical teachers ought undoubtedly be paid, but not out of fees
at the expense of laboratories and laboratory men. Institutions that supplement their
fee income out of special endowments or out of their general funds very properly go
ahead to pay their clinical teachers; otherwise the practitioner teacher must be subor-
dinated. That these schools have been persistently used for pecuniary advantage is
clear when an inventory of their belongings is contrasted with the annual income
that has in some cases been earned for many years. They have little or nothing to
show in the way of equipment. The medical department of the University of Arkan-
sas is thirty years old; its annual receipts are now $14,100;2 except fora small recent
investment, it is practically bare. The medical department of Georgetown Univer-
sity (Washington, D.C.) has been in operation almost sixty years; its annual income
is now estimated at $11,000. Its plant can represent only a small fraction of its re-
ceipts during its lifetime. The Medical College of Georgia is seventy years old ; it has
accumulated no plant worthy the name. The medical department of the University
of Oregon, started in 1887, with a present fee income of $8000 and state aid of $1000
a year, has only one small laboratory that represents any investment at all. The
medical department of the University of Chattanooga — twenty-one years old — with
an income now of $4290, of which the dean draws $1800, would not, if sold under

1 Additional examples to prove that the schools are operated for the profit of their faculties may be
given if necessary : University of Alabama, fee income $19,788, salaries $14,000; University of Ver-
mont, fee income, $22,730, salaries and dividends, $17,489 (laboratories, supplies, etc., $1941, publicity.

$1289).

2 Estimated.

140 MEDICAL EDUCATION

the hammer, bring $500. The St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons, with an
estimated income of SI 6,035, cannot afford the simplest equipment for its squalid
dispensary and its hopeless laboratories. The osteopaths bid fair to repeat the worst
offenses of the medical practitioners : their schools are fairly booming. The receipts
of the Kirksville institution probably reach $89,600 a year. The instruction fur-
nished is exceedingly cheap in quality. All in all, there are annually paid in the
United States and Canada about $3,000,000 in medical student fees. An equal sum
has been paid annually for years. It is obvious that only a small part of the total
fee income of our medical schools has been devoted to upbuilding and equipping the
schools, though just the reverse is pretended. Undoubtedly, the disfavor with which
educational benefactors have regarded medical education is justified by the merce-
nary record reflected in these figures. But it is highly important that henceforth
distinctions be made.

There are in the United States and Canada 56 l schools whose total annual avail-
able resources are below $10,000 each, — so small a sum that the endeavor to do any-
thing substantial with it is of course absurdly futile; a fact which is usually made
an excuse for doing nothing at all, not even washing the windows, sweeping the floor,
or providing a disinfectant for the dissecting-room. There is not a shred of justifica-
tion for their continuance: for even if there were need of several thousand doctors
annually, the wretched contribution made by these poverty-stricken schools could
well be spared. Among them may be mentioned the California Eclectic (Los Angeles),
estimated income $1060; Pulte Medical College (Cincinnati), estimated income $1325 ;
Toledo Medical College, with $3240 ; Willamette University, with $3580; and South-
western Homeopathic College, with $1100.

Responsibility for the conditions described does not rest on medical men alone;
colleges and universities have not infrequently become accessory after the fact. We
have repeatedly urged that the proper place for a medical school is within a univer-
sity; but there is no saving grace in the mere name. Three services may be specified
as comprised in the duty of a university which makes itself responsible for a me-
dical school : the definition and enforcement of entrance standards, the upholding
of scientific ideals, and responsibility for adequate support. Wehave mentioned univer-
sities that fail in the first or the second or in both; and as a rule these are the in-
stitutions that fail likewise in the third. Of the 155 medical schools of the continent,
82 are university departments, actual or so-called. With few exceptions the connec-
tion of these universities with medical education began at a time when no one took
obligations in the matter seriously. Some of those that entered the field thus lightly
have made amends. Others, awakening late to a sense of their obligations, are con-
fronted by an apparently hopeless situation. Their total annual income would not
alone suffice for a good medical school, — and it must carry the burden of the entire

1 There are thirteen more whose fee income is likewise below §10,000 apiece, but they are university
departments whose budgets, greatly in excess of fees, are carried by the respective universities.

FINANCIAL ASPECTS 141

institution. Their medical departments will, unless discontinued, prove sources of
weakness and reproach, until their income is augmented far beyond their immediate
expectations. As a matter of fact, few university administrators yet grasp clearly the
fundamental principles of modern medical education. Twenty-seven colleges and
universities of the United States and Canada have nominal or affiliated medical de-
partments which they do not control and which they do not help to support. The
state universities of Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon are in this position.
Among endowed institutions that lend their names to proprietary medical schools,
for which they can hope to do nothing and which they cannot possibly control as
long as they do nothing, are the University of Denver, Washburn College, Cotner
University, Epworth, Baylor, Western, and Dalhousie Universities. Some of these
institutions are very poor. Among those that are capable of leading respectable
lives as colleges, but are little less than absurd as universities, may be mentioned
Union University, in New York state, which is the appellation given to the super-
ficial combination of Union College and the Albany Law and Medical Schools. The
chancellor of the University of Denver, — aMethodist institution, — affiliated with the
Denver and Gross Medical College, finds a strange reason for self-congratulation in
the connection. "The University of Denver," he says in a recent report, "has always
had a form of organization that is peculiar to itself. From the beginning the profes-
sional schools have had autonomous life. The church has never expended one penny
for equipment or for buildings or for maintenance of the professional schools. ... It
has made a notable extension of its influence in very many ways through the profes-
sional schools of the university without the expenditure of a penny for any purpose
whatsoever." A highly diverting illustration of the seriousness with which these ties
are regarded has been recently furnished at Los Angeles ; there a local school, affili-
ated with the University of Southern California, saw a chance of improving its lot
by contracting an alliance with the University of California. A divorce was speedily
agreed on, and the University of California, protected by contract, however, against
any expenditure for two years, promptly became sponsor for a second clinical school.
The University of Southern California, however, enjoyed only a brief widowhood. Into
the vacant place, the Los Angeles College of Physicians and Surgeons promptly
stepped. The University of Southern California was thus again made whole by the
addition of a medical department which, enjoying an estimated total fee income of
$4075, will ask nothing for support and still less for supervision.

The strength of the argument advanced in this chapter is not dependent on the
absolute accuracy of the figures cited. Actual income may vary from our estimates
a few thousand dollars up or down; we may have failed to consider this offset or
that. It has been, as a matter of fact, utterly impossible to get figures that represent
exactly the same items in all, or even in many, institutions. An improvement in
institutional book-keeping would have to be effected in order to make accurate com-
parison possible. None the less, the picture is on the whole fair and reliable. Medi-

142 MEDICAL EDUCATION

cine is expensive to teach. It can in no event be taught out of fees. Reputable insti-
tutions with no other outlook should combine with better favored schools or stop
outright. Legal enactment should terminate the career of the others. Abundant bene-
faction should strengthen up to our need the relatively small number of schools re-
quired to deal effectively with the subject. No greater error can be made than to sup-
pose that endowment and university ideals are necessary only to medical schools
with high entrance standards. Vanderbilt and Tulane, trying to make intelligent
physicians out of high school boys in the south, need the same means and ideals as
Harvard and Johns Hopkins, working with college material in another section. In-
deed, the more defective the material or the more unfavorable the environment, the
greater must be the resources and the higher must be the purposes of those who have
undertaken to look after this vital social function.

CHAPTER IX

RECONSTRUCTION

THE necessity of a reconstruction that will at once reduce the number and improve
the output of medical schools may now be taken as demonstrated. A considerable
sloughing off has already occurred. It would have gone further but for the action of
colleges and universities which have by affiliation obstructed nature's own effort at
readjustment. Affiliation is now in the air. Medical schools that have either ceased
to prosper, or that have become sensitive to the imputation of proprietary status or
commercial motive, seek to secure their future or to escape their past by contracting
an academic alliance. The present chapter undertakes to work out a schematic re-
construction which may suggest a feasible course for the future. It is not supposed
that violent measures will at once be taken to reconstitute the situation on the basis
here worked out. A solution so entirely suggested by impersonal considerations may
indeed never be reached. But legislators and educators alike may be assisted by a
theoretical solution to which, as specific problems arise, they may refer.

This solution deals only with the present and the near future, — a generation, at
most. In the course of the next thirty years needs will develop of which we here take
no account. As we cannot foretell them, we shall not endeavor to meet them. Certain
it is that they will be most effectively handled if they crop up freely in an unen-
cumbered field. It is therefore highly undesirable that superfluous schools now exist-
ing should be perpetuated in order that a subsequent generation may find a means
of producing its doctors provided in advance. The cost of prolonging life through
this intervening period will be worse than wasted; and an adequate provision at
that moment will be embarrassed by inheritance and tradition. Let the new founda-
tions of that distant epoch enjoy the advantage of the Johns Hopkins, starting with-
out handicap at the level of the best knowledge of its day.

The principles upon which reconstruction would proceed have been established in
the course of this report: (1) a medical school is properly a university department;
it is most favorably located in a large city, where the problem of procuring clinical
material, at once abundant and various, practically solves itself. Hence those univer-
sities that have been located in cities can most advantageously develop medical
schools. (2) Unfortunately, however, our universities have not always been so placed.
They began in many instances as colleges or something less. Here a supposed solici-
tude for youth suggested an out-of-the-way location ; elsewhere political bargaining
brought about the same result. The state universities of the south and west, most
likely to enjoy sufficient incomes, are often unfortunately located: witness the Univer-
sity of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, of Georgia at Athens, of Mississippi at Oxford, of
Missouri at Columbia, of Arkansas at Fayetteville, of Kansas at Lawrence, of South
Dakota at Vermilion; and that experience has taught us nothing is proved by the

144 MEDICAL EDUCATION

recent location of the State University of Oklahoma at Norman. Some of these insti-
tutions are freed from the necessity of undertaking to teach medicine by an endowed
institution better situated; in other sections the only universities fitted by their large
support and their assured scientific ideals to maintain schools of medicine are handi-
capped by inferiority of location. We are not thereby justified in surrendering the
university principle. Experience, our own or that of Germany, proves, as we have
already pointed out, that the difficulty is not insuperable. At relatively greater ex-
pense, it is still feasible to develop a medical school in such an environment : there is
no magnet like reputation ; nothing travels faster than the fame of a great healer; dis-
tance is an obstacle readily overcome by those who seek health. The poor as well as
the rich find their way to shrines and healing springs. The faculty of medicine in
these schools may even turn the defect of situation to good account; for, freed from
distraction, the medical schools at Iowa City and Ann Arbor may the more readily
cultivate clinical science. An alternative may indeed be tried in the shape of a remote
department. The problem in that case is to make university control real, to impregnate
the distant school with genuine university spirit. The difficulty of the task may well
deter those whose resources are scanty or who are under no necessity of engaging
in medical teaching. As we need many universities and but few medical schools, a
long-distance connection is justified only where there is no local university qualified
to assume responsibility. A third solution — division — may, if the position taken
in previous chapters is sound, be disregarded in the final disposition.1

(3) We shall assign only one school to a single town. As a matter of fact, no
American city now contains more than one well supported university,2 — and if we
find it unnecessary or impolitic to duplicate local university plants, it is still less neces-
sary to duplicate medical schools. The needless expense, the inevitable shrinkage of
the student body, the difficulty of recruiting more than one faculty, the disturbance
due to competition for hospital services, argue against local duplication. It is some-
times contended that competition is stimulating: Tufts claims to have waked up
Harvard; the second Little Rock school did undoubtedly move the first to spend
several hundred dollars on desks and apparatus. But competition may also be de-
moralizing; the necessity of finding students constitutes medical schools which ought
to elevate standards the main obstacles to their elevation : witness the attitude of
several institutions in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago.
Moreover, local competition is a stimulus far inferior to the general scientific compe-
tition to which all well equipped, well conducted, and rightly inspired university
departments throughout the civilized world are parties. The English have experi-
mented with both forms, — a single school in the large provincial towns, a dozen
or more in London, — and their experience inclines them to reduce as far as possible

1 We shall omit the half-school because it may be considered to divide with the whole school the work
of the first two years ; it does not greatly affect the clinical output, with which this chapter is mainly
concerned.

2 Chicago is almost an exception, as Northwestern University is situated at Evanston, a suburb.

RECONSTRUCTION 145

the number of the London schools. Amalgamation has already taken place in cer-
tain American towns : the several schools of Cincinnati, of Indianapolis, and of Louis-
ville have all recently "merged." This step is easy enough in towns where there is
either no university or only one university. Where there are several, as in Chicago,
Boston, and New York, the problem is more difficult. Approached in a broad spirit
it may, however, prove not insoluble; cooperation may be arranged where several
institutions all possess substantial resources; universities of limited means can retire
without loss of prestige, — on the contrary, the respect in which they are held must
be heightened by any action dictated by conscientious refusal to continue a work
that they are in no position to do well.

(4) A reconstruction of medical education cannot ignore the patent fact that stu-
dents tend to study medicine in their own states, certainly in their own sections. In
general, therefore, arrangements ought to be made, as far as conditions heretofore
mentioned permit, to provide the requisite facilities within each of the characteris-
tic state groups. There is the added advantage that local conditions are thus heeded
and that the general profession is at a variety of points penetrated by educative in-
fluences. New Orleans, for example, would cultivate tropical medicine ; Pittsburgh,
the occupational diseases common in its environment. In respect to output, we may
once more fairly take existing conditions into account. We are not called on to
provide schools enough to keep up the present ratio. As we should in any case
hardly be embarrassed for almost a generation in the matter of supply, we shall do
well to produce no doctors who do not represent an improvement upon the present
average.

The principles above stated have been entirely disregarded in America. Medical
schools have been established regardless of need, regardless of the proximity of com-
petent universities, regardless of favoring local conditions. An expression of surprise
at finding an irrelevant and superfluous school usually elicits the reply that the
town, being a "gateway " or a " center," must of course harbor a " medical college."
It is not always easy to distinguish "gateway"" and "center:" a center appears to be
a town possessing, or within easy reach of, say 50,000 persons; a gateway is a town
with at least two railway stations. The same place may be both, — in which event
the argument is presumably irrefragable. Augusta, Georgia, Charlotte, North Caro-
lina, and Topeka, Kansas, are "centers," and as such are logical abodes of medical in-
struction. Little Rock, St. Joseph, Memphis, Toledo, Buffalo, are "gateways." The ar-
gument, so dear to local pride, can best be refuted by being pursued to its logical
conclusion. For there are still forty-eight towns in the United States with over
50,000 population each, and no medical schools : we are threatened with forty-eight
new schools at once, if the contention is correct. The truth is that the fundamental,
though of course not sole, consideration is the university, provided its resources are
adequate; and we have fortunately enough strong universities, properly distributed,
to satisfy every present need without serious sacrifice of sound principle. The Ger-

146 MEDICAL EDUCATION

man Empire contains eighty-four cities whose population exceeds 50,000 each. Of its
twenty-two medical schools, only eleven are to be found in them : that is, it possesses
seventy-three gateways and centers without universities or medical schools. The re-
maining eleven schools are located in towns of less than 50,000 inhabitants, a uni-
versity town of 30,000 being a fitter abode for medical study than a non-university
town of half a million, in the judgment of those who have best succeeded with it.

That the existing system came about without reference to what the country
needed or what was best for it may be easily demonstrated. Between 1904 and 1909
the country gained certainly upwards of 5,000,000 in population; during the same
period the number of medical students actually decreased from 28,142 to 22,145, i.e.,
over 20 per cent. The average annual production of doctors from 1900 to 1909 was
5222; but last June the number dropped to 4442. Finally, the total number of
medical colleges which reached its maximum — 1661 — in 1904 has in the five years
since decreased about 10 per cent. Our problem is to calculate how far tendencies
already observable may be carried without harm.

We have calculated that the south requires for the next generation 490 new doc-
tors annually, the rest of the country, 1500. We must then provide machinery for the
training of about 2000 graduates in medicine yearly. Reckoning fatalities of all kinds
at ten per cent per annum, graduating classes of 2000 imply approximately junior
classes of 2200, sophomore classes of 2440, freshman classes aggregating 2700, —
something over 9000 students of medicine. Thirty medical schools, with an average
enrolment of 300 and average graduation classes of less than 70, will be easily equal
to the task. As many of these could double both enrolment and output without
danger, a provision planned to meet present needs is equally sufficient for our growth
for years to come. It will be time to devise more schools when the productive limit
of those now suggested shall come in sight.

For the purpose here in mind, the country may be conceived as divided into sev-
eral sections, within each of which, with due regard to what it now contains, medical
schools enough to satisfy its needs must be provided.8 Pending the fuller develop-
ment of the states west of the Mississippi, the section east will have to relieve them
of part of their responsibility. The provisional nature of our suggestions is thus
obvious; for as the west increases in population, as its universities grow in number
and strength, the balance will right itself: additional schools will be created in the
west and south rather than in the north and east. It would of course be unfortunate
to over-emphasize the importance of state lines. We shall do well to take advantage
of every unmistakably favorable opportunity so long as we keep within the public
need; and to encourage the freest possible circulation of students throughout the
entire country.

1 Not including osteopathic schools.

a This chapter now recapitulates and summarizes the more detailed accounts contained in Part II, in
which the schools of each state are described and the general state situation discussed.

RECONSTRUCTION 147

(1) New England represents a fairly homogeneous region, comprising six states,
the population of which is increasingly urban. Its population increased, 1908-9,
somewhat less than 75,000, requiring, on the basis of one doctor to every increase
of 1500 in population, 50 new doctors. About 150 physicians died. Seventy-five
men would replace one-half of these. In all, 125 new doctors would be needed.
To produce this number two schools, one of moderate size and one smaller, readily
suffice. Fortunately they can be developed without sacrificing any of our criteria.
The medical schools of Harvard and Yale are university departments, situated in
the midst of ample clinical material, with considerable financial backing now and
every prospect of more. It is unwise to divide the Boston field; it is unnecessary to pro-
long the life of the clinical departments of Dartmouth, Bowdoin, and Vermont. They
are not likely soon to possess the financial resources needed to develop adequate cli-
nics in their present location ; and the time has passed when even excellent didactic
instruction can be regarded as compensating for defective opportunities in obstetrics,
contagious diseases, and general medicine. The historic position of the schools in
question counts little as against changed ideals. Dartmouth and Vermont can, how-
ever, offer the work of the first two years with the clinical coloring made feasible
by the proximity of a hospital, as is the case with the University of Missouri at Co-
lumbia; with that they ought to be content for the time being.

(2) The middle Atlantic states comprise for our purpose New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Their population
grows at the rate of 300,000 annually, for whom 200 doctors can care; 230 more would
fill one-half the vacancies arising through death : a total of 430 needed. Available
universities are situated in New York city, Syracuse, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,
Baltimore. The situation is in every respect ideal; the universities located at New
York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are strong and prosperous; those of Syracuse
and Pittsburgh, though less developed, give good promise. Without sacrifice of a
single detail, these five university towns can not only support medical schools for
the section, but also to no small extent relieve less favored spots. The schools of
Albany, Buffalo, Brooklyn, Washington,1 would, on this plan, disappear, — certainly
until academic institutions of proper caliber had been developed. Whether even in
the event of their creation they should for some years endeavor to cultivate medicine
is quite doubtful. Appreciation of what is involved in the undertaking might well
give them pause. Meanwhile, within the university towns already named there would
be much to do : better state laws are needed in order to exterminate the worst schools ;
merger or liquidation must bring together many of those that still survive. The
section under consideration ought indeed to lead the Union; but the independent
schools of New York and Pennsylvania are powerful enough to prove a stubborn
obstacle to any progressive movement, however clearly in the public interest.

1 Except Howard University which, patronized by the government, is admirably located for the
medical education of the negro.

148 MEDICAL EDUCATION

(3) Greater unevenness must be tolerated in the south;1 proprietary schools or nom-
inal university departments will doubtless survive longer there than in other parts of
the country because of the financial weakness of both endowed and tax-supported in-
stitutions. All the more important, therefore, for universities to deal with the subject
in a large spirit, avoiding both overlapping and duplication. An institution may well
be glad to be absolved from responsibilities that some other is better fitted to meet.
Tulane and Vanderbilt, for example, are excellently situated in respect to medical
education ; the former has already a considerable endowment applicable to medicine.
The state universities of Louisiana and Tennessee may therefore resign medicine to
these endowed institutions, grateful for the opportunity to cultivate other fields.
Every added superfluous school weakens the whole by wasting money and scattering
the eligible student body. None of the southern state universities, indeed, is wisely
placed : Texas has no alternative but a remote department, such as it now supports
at Galveston; Georgia will one day develop a university medical school at Atlanta;
Alabama, at Birmingham, — the university being close by, at Tuscaloosa. The Uni-
versity of Virginia is repeating Ann Arbor at Charlottesville; whether it would do
better to operate a remote department at Richmond or Norfolk, the future will deter-
mine. Six schools are thus provided:2 they are sufficient to the needs of the section
just now. The resources available even for their support are as yet painfully inade-
quate: three of the six are still dependent upon fees for both plant and maintenance.
It is doubtful whether the other universities of the south should generally offer even
the instruction of the first two years. The scale upon which these two-year depart-
ments can be now organized by them is below the minimum of continuous efficiency;
they can contribute nothing to science, and their quota of physicians can be better
trained in one of the six schools suggested. Concentration in the interest of effective-
ness, team work between all institutions working in the cause of southern development,
economy as a means of improving the lot of the teacher — these measures, advisable
everywhere, are especially urgent in the south.

(4) In the north central tier — Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois —
population increased 239,685 the last year: 160 doctors would care for the increase;
190 more would replace one-half of those that died: a total of 350. Large cities with
resident universities available for medical education are Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleve-
land, and Chicago. Ann Arbor has demonstrated the ability successfully to combat
the disadvantages of a small town. The University of Wisconsin can unquestionably
do the same, with a slighter handicap, at Madison whenever it chooses to complete
its work there. Indiana University has undertaken the problem of a distant connec-
tion at Indianapolis. Four cities thus fulfil all our criteria, two more develop the
small town type, one more is an experiment with the remote university department.

lTbe south includes eleven states, riz., Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida,
Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas.

*A seventh, Meharry, at Nashville, must be included for the medical education of the negro.

RECONSTRUCTION 149

Surely the territory in question can be supplied by these seven medical centers. Chi-
cago alone is likely to draw a considerable number of students from a wider area. It
has long been a populous medical center. Nevertheless the number of high-grade stu-
dents it just now contains is not large. If the practice of medicine in this area rested
on a two-year college basis, as it well might, there would to-day be perhaps 600
students of medicine in that city. Cooperative effort between the two universities
there and the state university at Urbana would readily provide for them.

(5) The middle west comprises eight states, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Okla-
homa, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, with a gain in popula-
tion last year of 216,036, requiring 140 more physicians, plus 160 to replace half
the deaths : a total of 300. To supply them, urban universities capable of conduct-
ing medical departments of proper type are situated in Minneapolis and St. Louis;
and both deserve strong, well supported schools. For Minneapolis must largely carry
the weight of the Dakotas and Montana; St. Louis must assist Texas and have an
eye to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and the southwest. The University of Nebraska, now
dispersing its energies through a divided school, can be added to this list; for it
will quite certainly either concentrate the department on its own site (Lincoln, pop-
ulation 48,232), or bring the two pieces together at Omaha, only an hours distance
away. The University of Kansas will doubtless combine its divided department at
Kansas City. The State University of Iowa emulates Ann Arbor at Iowa City.
These five schools must produce 297 doctors annually. Their capacity would go
much farther. Oklahoma1 and the Dakotas might well for a time postpone the entire
question, supporting the work of the first two years, which they have already under-
taken, on a much more liberal basis than they have yet reached. With the exception of
St. Louis, all these proposed schools belong to state universities, and even at St.
Louis the cooperation of the state university may prove feasible. A close relation
may thus be secured between agencies concerned with public health and those devoted
to medical education. The public health laboratory may become virtually part of the
medical school, — a highly stimulating relation for both parties. The school will
profit by contact with concrete problems ; the public health laboratory will inevitably
push beyond routine, prosecuting in a scientific spirit the practical tasks referred to
it from all portions of the state. The direct connection of the state with a medical
school that it wholly or even partly maintains will also solve the vexed question of
standards : for the educational standard which the state fixes for its own sons will be
made the practice standard as well. Private corporations, whether within or without its
borders, will no longer be permitted to deluge the community with an inferior product.

(6) Seven thinly settled and on the whole slowly growing states and territories
form the farther west: New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah,
Arizona. Their increase in population was last year about 45,000. They contain now

1 Should it be possible for the State University of Oklahoma, by engaging in clinical work at Okla-
homa City, to get and to retain a monopoly of the field, the step would doubtless be advisable even now.

150 MEDICAL EDUCATION

one doctor for every 563 persons. In view of local conditions, let us reckon one addi-
tional doctor for every additional 750 persons : 60 will be required. And, further,
let us make up the death-roll man for man: 60 more would be needed — altogether
120. There are at the moment in this region only two available sites, Salt Lake
City and Denver. At the former the University of Utah is situated ; the latter could
be occupied by the University of Colorado, located at Boulder, practically a suburb.
The outlying portions of this vast territory will long continue to procure their doc-
tors by immigration or by sending their sons to Minneapolis, Madison, Ann Arbor,
Chicago, or St. Louis.

(7) The three states on the Pacific coast, California, Oregon, Washington, are some-
what self-contained. They increased last year by 53,454 persons, requiring 36 more
physicians; 50 more would repair one-half the losses by death: a total of 86. Avail-
able sites, filling the essential requirements, are Berkeley and Seattle. The former,
with the adjoining towns of Alameda and Oakland, controls a population of 250,000
or more; the medical department of the University of California concentrated there
would enjoy ideal conditions. At present the clinical ends of two divided schools share
San Francisco, and the outlook for medical education of high quality is rendered du-
bious by the division. With unique wisdom the University of Washington and the
physicians of Seattle1 have thus far refrained from starting a medical school in
that state. They have held, and rightly, that in the present highly overcrowded con-
dition of the profession on the coast, there is no need for an additional ordinary
school ; and the resources of the university are not yet adequate to a really creditable
establishment. The field will therefore be kept clear until the university is in posi-
tion to occupy it to advantage.

(8) In Canada the existing ratio of physicians to population is 1 :1030. The esti-
mated increase of population last year was 239,516, requiring 160 new physicians;
losses by death are estimated at 90. As the country is thinly settled and doctors
much less abundant than in the United States, let us suppose these replaced man for
man : 250 more doctors would be annually required. The task of supplying them
could be for the moment safely left to the Universities of Toronto and Manitoba, to
McGill and to Laval at Quebec. Halifax, Western (London), and Laval at Montreal
have no present function. At some future time doubtless Dalhousie University at
Halifax will need to create a medical department. The future of Queen's depends on
its ability to develop halfway between Toronto and Montreal, despite comparative

1 Copy of Extract of Minute*

Of the King County Medical Society (State of Washington), June 20, 1904.

Committee. On motion a committee consisting of F. H. Coe, P. W. Willis, and R. W. Schoenle was
appointed to draw up suitable resolutions regarding the establishment of any medical preparatory
course in the University of Washington, condemning the same and directed to the regents of the
institution.

Committee. A committee, consisting of H. M. Read, L. R. Dawson, J. E. :Harris, N. D. Pontius,
C. A. Smith, and I. A. Parry, was also appointed with directions to visit Dr. Kane personally and
urge the importance of our position upon the same subject.

RECONSTRUCTION 151

inaccessibility, the Ann Arbor type of school. As for the rest, the great northwestern
territory will, as it develops, create whatever additional facilities it may require.

In so far as the United States is concerned, the foregoing sketch calls for 31 medi-
cal schools1 with a present annual output of about 2000 physicians, i. e., an average
graduating class of about 70 each. They are capable of producing 3500. All are
university departments, busy in advancing knowledge as well as in training doc-
tors. Nineteen are situated in large cities with the universities of which they are
organic parts; four are in small towns with their universities; eight are located in
large towns always close by the parent institutions. Divided and far distant depart-
ments are altogether avoided.

Twenty states8 are left without a complete school. Most of these are unlikely to
be favorably circumstanced for the next half century, so far as we can now judge.
Several may, however, find the undertaking feasible within a decade or two. The
University of Arkansas might be moved from Fayetteville to Little Rock ; Oklahoma,
if its rapid growth is maintained, may from Norman govern a medical school at
Oklahoma City; Oregon may take full responsibility for Portland. Unfortunately,
of the three additional schools thus created, only one, that at Little Rock, would
represent conditions at their best. There is therefore no reason to hasten the others;
for their problem may, if left open, be more advantageously solved.

To bring about the proposed reconstruction, some 120 schools have been apparently
wiped off the map. As a matter of fact, our procedure is far less radical than would
thus appear. Of the 120 schools that disappear, 37 are already negligible, for they con-
tain less than 50 students apiece; 13 more contain between 50 and 75 students each,
and 16 more between 75 and 100. That is, of the 120 schools, 66 are so small that
their student bodies can, in so far as they are worthy, be swept into strong institu-
tions without seriously stretching their present enrolment. Of the 30 institutions
that remain, several will survive through merger. For example, the Cleveland College
of Physicians and Surgeons could be consolidated with Western Reserve; the amal-
gamation of Jefferson Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania would make
one fair-sized school on an enforced two-year college standard; Tufts and Harvard,
Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee, Creighton and the University of Ne-
braska, would, if joined, form institutions of moderate size, capable of considerable
expansion before reaching the limit of efficiency.

In order that these mergers may be effective, not only institutional, but personal
ambition must be sacrificed. It is an advantage when two schools come together;
but the advantage is gravely qualified if the new faculty is the arithmetical sum of
both former faculties. The mergers at Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville,

1 The accompanying maps contrast the existing with the suggested number and distribution. Meharry
and Howard are included.

2 They are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida,
Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming,
Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon. One school will not long content the state of Texas.

154 MEDICAL EDUCATION

have been arranged in this way. The fundamental principles of faculty organization
are thus sacrificed. Unless combination is to destroy organization, titles must be
shaved when schools unite. There must be one professor of medicine, one professor
of surgery , etc., to whom others are properly subordinated. What with superabundant
professorial appointments, due now to desire to annex another hospital, and again
to annexation of another school, faculties have become unmanageably large, viewed
either as teaching, research, or administrative bodies.

Reduction of our 155 medical schools to 31 would deprive of a medical school
no section that is now capable of maintaining one. It would threaten no scarcity of
physicians until the country's development actually required more than 3500 physi-
cians annually, that is to say, for a generation or two, at least. Meanwhile, the out-
line proposed involves no artificial standardization: it concedes a different standard
to the south as long as local needs require; it concedes the small town university
type where it is clearly of advantage to adhere to it; it varies the general ratio in
thinly settled regions; and, finally, it provides a system capable without overstraining
of producing twice as many doctors as we suppose the country now to need. In other
words, we may be wholly mistaken in our figures without in the least impairing the
feasibility of the kind of renovation that has been outlined ; and every institution
arranged for can be expected to make some useful contribution to knowledge and
progress.

The right of the state to deal with the entire subject in its own interest can as-
suredly not be gainsaid. The physician is a social instrument. If there were no disease,
there would be no doctors. And as disease has consequences that immediately go
beyond the individual specifically affected, society is bound to protect itself against
unnecessary spread of loss or danger. It matters not that the making of doctors
has been to some extent left to private institutions. The state already makes certain
regulations; it can by the same right make others. Practically the medical school is a
public service corporation. It is chartered by the state; it utilizes public hospitals on
the ground of the social nature of its service. The medical school cannot then escape
social criticism and regulation. It was left to itself while society knew no better. But
civilization consists in the legal registration of gains won by science and experience;
and science and experience have together established the terms upon which medicine
can be most useful. "In the old days," says Metchnikoff,1 "anyone was allowed to
practise medicine, because there was no medical science and nothing was exact. Even
at the present time among less civilized people, any old woman is allowed to be a
midwife. Among more civilized races, differentiation has taken place and childbh-ths
are attended by women of special training who are midwives by diploma. In case of
nations still more civilized, the trained midwives are directed by obstetric physicians
who have specialized in the conducting of labor. This high degree of differentiation
has arisen with and has itself aided the progress of obstetrical science.'1 Legislation
l Tht Nature of Man (translated by Chalmers), p. 300.

RECONSTRUCTION 155

which should procure for all the advantage of such conditions as is now possible
would speedily bring about a reconstruction quite as extensive as that described.

Such control in the social interest inevitably encounters the objection that indi-
vidualism is thereby impaired. So it is, at that level; so it is intended. The commu-
nity through such regulation undertakes to abridge the freedom of particular indi-
viduals to exploit certain conditions for their personal benefit. But its aim is thereby
to secure for all others more freedom at a higher level. Society forbids a company of
physicians to pour out upon the community a horde of ill trained physicians. Their
liberty is indeed clipped. As a result, however, more competent doctors being trained
under the auspices of the state itself, the public health is improved ; the physical
well-being of the wage- worker is heightened; and a restriction put upon the liberty,
so-called, of a dozen doctors increases the effectual liberty of all other citizens. Has
democracy, then, really suffered a set-back? Reorganization along rational lines in-
volves the strengthening, not the weakening, of democratic principle, because it tends
to provide the conditions upon which well-being and effectual liberty depend.

CHAPTER X

THE MEDICAL SECTS

Lv the reconstruction just sketched, no allusion has been made to medical sectarianism.
We have considered the making of doctors and the increase of knowledge; allopathy,
homeopathy, osteopathy, have cut no figure in the discussion. Is it essential that we
should now conclude a treaty of peace, by which the reduced number of medical schools
shall be so pro-rated as to recognize dissenters on an equitable basis?

The proposition raises at once the question as to whether in this era of scientific
medicine, sectarian medicine is logically defensible; as to whether, while it exists,
separate standards, fixed by the conditions under which it can survive, are justifi-
able. Prior to the placing of medicine on a scientific basis, sectarianism was, of
course, inevitable. Every one started with some sort of preconceived notion; and
from a logical point of view, one preconception is as good as another. Allopathy
was just as sectarian as homeopathy. Indeed, homeopathy was the inevitable retort
to allopathy. If one man "believes" in dissimilars, contrary suggestion is certain
to provide another who will stake his life on similars; the champion of big doses
will be confronted by the champion of little ones. But now that allopathy has sur-
rendered to modern medicine, is not homeopathy borne on the same current into the
same harbor?

The modern point of view may be restated as follows: medicine is a discipline, in which
the effort is made to use knowledge procured in various ways in order to effect cer-
tain practical ends. With abstract general propositions it has nothing to do. It har-
bors no preconceptions as to diseases or their cure. Instead of starting with a finished
and supposedly adequate dogma or principle, it has progressively become less cock-
sure and more modest. It distrusts general propositions, a priori explanations, gran-
diose and comforting generalizations. It needs theories only as convenient sum-
maries in which a number of ascertained facts may be used tentatively to define a
course of action. It makes no effort to use its discoveries to substantiate a principle
formulated before the facts were even suspected. For it has learned from the previ-
ous history of human thought that men possessed of vague preconceived ideas are
strongly disposed to force facts to fit, defend, or explain them. And this tendency both
interferes with the free search for truth and limits the good which can be extracted
from such truth as is in its despite attained.

Modern medicine has therefore as little sympathy for allopathy as for homeopathy.
It simply denies outright the relevancy or value of either doctrine. It wants not
dogma, but facts. It countenances no presupposition that is not common to it with
all the natural sciences, with all logical thinking.

The sectarian, on the other hand, begins with his mind made up. He possesses in
advance a general formula, which the particular instance is going to illustrate, verify,

MEDICAL SECTS 157

reaffirm, even though he may not know just how. One may be sure that facts so
read will make good what is expected of them; that only that will be seen which
will sustain its expected function ; that every aspect noted will be dutifully loyal to
the revelation in whose favor the observer is predisposed: the human mind is so
constituted.

It is precisely the function of scientific method — in social life, politics, engineering,
medicine — to get rid of such hindrances to clear thought and effective action. For
it, comprehensive summaries are situate in the future, not in the past; we shall at-
tain them, if at all, at the end of great travail; they are not lightly to be assumed
prior to the beginning. Science believes slowly; in the absence of crucial demonstra-
tion its mien is humble, its hold is light. "One should not teach dogmas; on the
contrary, every utterance must be put to the proof. One should not train disciples
but form observers : one must teach and work in the spirit of natural science."1

Scientific medicine therefore brushes aside all historic dogma. It gets down
to details immediately. No man is asked in whose name he comes — whether that
of Hahnemann, Rush, or of some more recent prophet. But all are required to
undergo rigorous cross-examination. Whatsoever makes good is accepted, becomes
in so far part, and organic part, of the permanent structure. To plead in advance
a principle couched in pseudo-scientific language or of extra-scientific character
is to violate scientific quality. There is no need, just as there is no logical justifi-
cation, for the invocation of names or creeds, for the segregation from the larger
body of established truth of any particular set of truths or supposed truths as es-
pecially precious. Such segregation may easily invest error with the sanctity of truth;
it will certainly result in conferring disproportionate importance upon the fact or pro-
cedure marked out as of pivotal significance. The tendency to build a system out of
a few partially apprehended facts, deductive inference filling in the'rest, has not in-
deed been limited to medicine, but it has nowhere else had more calamitous conse-
quences.

The logical position of medical sectarians to-day is self-contradictory. They have
practically accepted the curriculum as it has been worked out on the scientific basis.
They teach pathology, bacteriology, clinical microscopy. They are thereby com-
mitted to the scientific method ; for they aim to train the student to ascertain and
interpret facts in the accepted scientific manner. He may even learn his sciences in
the same laboratory as the non-sectarian. But scientific method cannot be limited
to the first half of medical education. The same method, the same attitude of mind,
must consistently permeate the entire process. The sectarian therefore in effect con-
tradicts himself when, having pursued or having agreed to pursue the normal scien-
tific curriculum with his student for two years, he at the beginning of the third year
produces a novel principle and requires that thenceforth the student effect a com-
promise between science and revelation.
1 Johannes Orth : Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift, vol. xliii. p. 818.

158 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Once granted the possibility of medical dogma, there can be no limit to the num-
ber of dissenting sects. As a matter of fact, only three or four are entitled to serious
notice in an educational discussion. The chiropractics, the mechano- therapists, and
several others are not medical sectarians, though exceedingly desirous of masquerading
as such ; they are unconscionable quacks, whose printed advertisements are tissues of
exaggeration, pretense, and misrepresentation of the most unqualifiedly mercenary
character. The public prosecutor and the grand jury are the proper agencies for
dealing with them.

Sectarians, in the logical sense above discussed, are (1) the homeopathists, (2) the
eclectics, (3) the physiomedicals, (4) the osteopaths. All of them accept in theory,
at least, the same fundamental basis. They admit that anatomy, pathology, bac-
teriology, physiology, must form the foundation of a medical education, to use the
words broadly so as to include all varieties of therapeutic procedure. They offer no
alternative to pathology or physiology; there is, they concede, only one proper
science of the structure of the human body, of the abnormal growths that afflict it.
So far, they make no issue as against scientific medicine. Much is involved in agree-
ment up to this point. The standards of admission to the medical school, the facili-
ties which the schools must furnish in order effectively to teach the fundamental
branches, are the same for all alike. A student of homeopathy or of osteopathy needs
to be just as intelligent and mature as a student of scientific medicine; and he is no
easier to teach; for during the first and second years, at least, he is supposed to be
doing precisely the same things.

At the beginning of the clinical years, the sectarian interposes his special princi-
ple. But educationally, the conditions he needs thenceforth do not materially differ
from those needed by consistently scientific medicine. Once more, whatever the ar-
bitrary peculiarity of the treatment to be followed, the student cannot be trained to
recognize clinical conditions, to distinguish between different clinical conditions, or
to follow out a line of treatment, except in the ways previously described in deal-
ing with scientific medicine. He must see patients and must follow their progress, so
as to discover what results take place in consequence of the specific measures employed.
A sectarian institution, being a school in which students are trained to do particular
things, needs the same resources and facilities on the clinical side as a school of scien-
tific medicine.

Sectarian institutions do not exist in Canada ; in the United States there are 32
of them, of which 15 are homeopathic, 8 eclectic, 1 physiomedical, and 8 osteopathic.
Without attempting to indicate the peculiar tenets of each, we shall briefly review
them as schools, seeking to ascertain how far they are in position effectively to teach,
quite regardless of the individual doctrine each sect may desire to promote.

None of the fifteen homeopathic schools 1 requires more than a high school educa-

1 Hahnemann (San Francisco), Hahnemann and Hering (Chicago), state universities of Iowa and
Michigan, Southwestern Homeopathic (Louisville), Boston University, Detroit Homeopathic, Kan-

MEDICAL SECTS 159

tion for entrance ; only five1 require so much. The remaining eleven get less, — how
much less depending on their geographical locations rather than on the school^ own
definition. The Louisville, Kansas City, and Baltimore schools cannot be said to have
admission standards in any strict sense at all ; Pulte at Cincinnati is bound to be care-
ful in dealing with Ohio candidates: outsiders are responsible for themselves. The
minimum at Boston University, to judge from the examinations which, in default of
acceptable credentials, the candidate must pass, covers less than two years of a good
high school course.

On the laboratory side, though the homeopaths admit the soundness of the sci-
entific position, they have taken no active part in its development. Nowhere in homeo-
pathic institutions, with the exception of one or two departments at Boston Uni-
versity, is there any evidence of progressive scientific work. Even "drug proving" is
rarely witnessed. The fundamental assumption of the sect is sacred; and scientific
activity cannot proceed where any such interdict is responsible for the spirit of the
institution. The homeopathic departments at Iowa and Michigan are in this respect
only half-schools, — clinical halves. For their students get their scientific instruction
in pathology, anatomy, etc., in the only laboratories which the university devotes to
those subjects, under men none of whom sympathizes with homeopathy. Their dis-
advantage is increased by the fact that the instruction is adapted to students who
have had one or two years of college work. The general argument in favor of higher
standards is here reinforced by the consideration that the homeopathic students
should certainly qualify themselves for the only grade of scientific instruction that
the two universities offer.

Of complete homeopathic schools, Boston University, the New York Homeopathic
College, and the Hahnemann of Philadelphia alone possess the equipment necessary
for the effective routine teaching of the fundamental branches. None of them can
employ full-time teachers to any considerable extent. But they possess fairly well-
equipped laboratories in anatomy, pathology, bacteriology, and physiology,1 a mu-
seum showing care and intelligence, and a decent library. Boston University deserves
especial commendation for what it has accomplished with its small annual income.

Of the remaining homeopathic schools, four are weak and uneven: the Hahnemann
of San Francisco and the Hahnemann of Chicago have small, but not altogether in-
adequate, equipment for the teaching of chemistry, elementary pathology and bac-
teriology ; the Cleveland school offers an active course in experimental physiology. Be-
yond ordinary dissection and elementary chemistry, they offer little else. There is,
for example, no experimental physiology in the San Francisco Hahnemann: "the
instructor does n't believe in it;" the Chicago Hahnemann contains a small outfit and

sas City (Kansas) Hahnemann, New York Medical College for Women, New York Homeopathic,
Pulte (Cincinnati), Cleveland Homeopathic, Hahnemann (Philadelphia), Atlantic Medical (Baltimore).

1 State universities of Iowa and Michigan, Detroit Homeopathic, and the two New York schools.

2 The Philadelphia Hahnemann is defective in experimental physiology.

160 MEDICAL EDUCATION

a few animals for that subject; the Cleveland equipment for pathology and bacteri-
ology is meager. The New York Homeopathic College for Women is well intentioned,
but its means have permitted it to do but little in any direction.

Six schools remain — all utterly hopeless: Hering (Chicago), because it is with-
out plant or resources; the other five,1 because in addition to having nothing, their
condition indicates the total unfitness of their managers for any sort of educational
responsibility. The buildings are filthy and neglected. At Louisville no branch is
properly equipped ; in one room, the outfit is limited to a dirty and tattered mani-
kin; in another, a single guinea pig awaits his fate in a cage. At Detroit the dean
and secretary "have their offices downtown;" the so-called laboratories are in utter
confusion. At Kansas City similar disorder prevails. At the Atlantic Medical ap-
pearances are equally bad ; to make matters worse, the school has lately omitted the
word "homeopathic" from its title so as to gather in students dropped from other
Baltimore schools.

In respect to hospital facilities, the University of Michigan, Boston University, and
the New York Homeopathic alone command an adequate supply of material, under
proper control, though modern teaching methods are not thoroughly utilized even by
them. The Iowa school controls a small, but inadequate, hospital. All the others are
seriously handicapped by either lack of material or lack of control, and in most instances
by both. The Hahnemann of San Francisco relies mainly on 30 beds supported by the
city and county in a private hospital ; the Detroit school is cordially welcome at the
Grace Hospital, but less than 60 beds are available, and they are mostly surgical ; the
Woman's Homeopathic of New York2 controls a hospital of 35 available beds, mostly
surgical ; the Southwestern (Louisville) and the Cleveland school get one-fifth of the
patients that enter the city hospitals of their respective towns, but these hospitals are
not equipped or organized with a view to teaching. The Kansas City school holds
clinics one day a week at the City Hospital ; Pulte (Cincinnati) and the Atlantic
(Baltimore) have, as nearly as one can gather, nothing definite at all. Several of the
schools appear to be unnecessarily handicapped. The Chicago Hahnemann adjoins
a hospital with 60 ward beds. But as the superintendent " does n't believe in admitting
students to wards," there is little or nothing beyond amphitheater teaching. A
bridge connects Hering (Chicago) with a homeopathic hospital, but "students are
not admitted." The Cleveland school is next door to a hospital with which it was once
intimate ; their relations have been ruptured. An excellent hospital is connected with
the building occupied by the Philadelphia Hahnemann, but there is no ward work.

The dispensary situation is rather worse. Iowa and Ann Arbor have little oppor-
tunity. Of the others, Boston University alone has a really model dispensary, com-
paring favorably in equipment, organization, and conduct with the best institutions

'Southwestern (Louisville), Pulte (Cincinnati), Atlantic (Baltimore), and the Detroit and Kansas
City schools.

'This school has scattered supplementary facilities, as is the way of New York schools.

MEDICAL SECTS 161

of the kind in the country. The New York Homeopathic, the Chicago Hahnemann,
and the Philadelphia Hahnemann command material enough. The others lack material,
equipment, or care ; in some instances, — Atlantic Medical, Pulte, Detroit, Kansas
City, — they lack everything that a dispensary should possess.

Financially, the two state university departments and the New York Homeo-
pathic school are the only homeopathic schools whose strength is greater than their
fee income. All the others are dependent on tuition. Their outlook for higher entrance
standards or improved teaching is, therefore, distinctly unpromising. Only a few of
them command tuition fees enough to do anything at all : the Chicago Hahnemann,
Boston University, and the Philadelphia Hahnemann, with annual fees ranging be-
tween $12,000 and $18,000.* Nine of them are hopelessly poor: the San Francisco
Hahnemann, Hering (Chicago), the Detroit Homeopathic, and the Atlantic Medi-
cal operate on less than $4000 J a year; the Southwestern (Louisville) and Pulte
(Cincinnati) on less than S1500.1

In the year 1900 there were twenty-two homeopathic colleges in the United
States ; to-day there are fifteen ; the total student enrolment has within the same
period been cut almost in half, decreasing from 1909 to 1009 ;2 the graduating
classes have fallen from 413 to 246. As the country is still poorly supplied with
homeopathic physicians, these figures are ominous ; for the rise of legal standard must
inevitably affect homeopathic practitioners. In the financial weakness of their schools,
the further shrinkage of the student body will inhibit first the expansion, then the
keeping up, of the sect.

Logically, no other outcome is possible. The ebbing vitality of homeopathic schools
is a striking demonstration of the incompatibility of science and dogma. One may
begin with science and work through the entire medical curriculum consistently, ex-
posing everything to the same sort of test ; or one may begin with a dogmatic asser-
tion and resolutely refuse to entertain anything at variance with it. But one cannot
do both. One cannot simultaneously assert science and dogma; one cannot travel
half the road under the former banner, in the hope of taking up the latter, too, at
the middle of the march. Science, once embraced, will conquer the whole. Homeopathy
has two options: one to withdraw into the isolation in which alone any peculiar
tenet can maintain itself; the other to put that tenet into the melting-pot. Histor-
ically it undoubtedly played an important part in discrediting empirical allopathy.
But laboratories of physiology and pharmacology are now doing that work far more
effectively than homeopathy; and they are at the same time performing a con-
structive task for which homeopathy, as such, is unfitted. It will be clear, then, why,
when outlining a system of schools for the training of physicians on scientific lines,
no specific provision is made for homeopathy. For everything of proved value in

1 Estimated.

2 Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, vol. i., 1909, no. 11, p. 537. The Journal of the
American Medical Association, Aug. 14, 1909 (pp. 556, 557), gives figures somewhat lower: 889 instead
of 1009 ; 209 instead of 246. The discrepancy does not alter our interpretation.

162 MEDICAL EDUCATION

homeopathy belongs of right to scientific medicine and is at this moment incorpo-
rate in it; nothing else has any footing at all, whether it be of allopathic or homeo-
pathic lineage. "A new school of practitioners has arisen," says Dr. Osier, "which
cares nothing for homeopathy and less for so-called allopathy. It seeks to study, ra-
tionally and scientifically, the action of drugs, old and new."1

There are eight eclectic schools.2 One of them — that in New York City — requires
the Regents' Medical Student Certificate, i. e., a four-year high school education,
for admission; the Cincinnati school must require an equal preliminary education of
students expecting to practise in Ohio, others taking the matter into their own
hands. Just how the instruction is thus accommodated to various levels is not clear.
The remaining six schools have either nominal requirements or none at all.

None of the schools has anything remotely resembling the laboratory equipment
which all claim in their catalogues. The Cincinnati institution possesses a new and
attractive building, thus far meagerly fitted out; the New York school has a clean
building with a chemical laboratory in which elementary chemistry can be and ap-
parently is taught properly. It has little else: a small room for the microscopic sub-
jects, but no adequate equipment for teaching them; a few thousand books, mostly
old ; a few models, a lantern, etc., — and this is most satisfactorily equipped of all the
eclectic institutions. The Hospital School at Atlanta, starting on four weeks'1 notice,
had time to get students, but not to get means of teaching them. The private labora-
tory of the instructor in pathology and bacteriology was meanwhile at their service:
other equipment there was, at the time of the visit, none.

The remaining five eclectic schools are without exception filthy and almost bare.
They have at best grimy little laboratories for elementary chemistry, a few micro-
scopes, some bottles containing discolored and unlabeled pathological material, an
incubator out of commission, and a horrid dissecting-room, — when dissecting is in
progress. The St. Louis school was the proud possessor of some new physiological
apparatus, the state board having recently issued an edict requiring its purchase; but
there was no place to use it and no sign of its use. The Kansas City institution had
likewise made a recent investment to the same extent, having just taken on the fa-
culty the "laboratory man" of the local homeopathic and osteopathic schools. The
other Atlanta, the Los Angeles, and the Lincoln schools have even less. The Lin-
coln institution alleges that its scientific training is given at Cotner University, where
the only material available for medical instruction consists of a chemical laboratory,
some microscopes, and a small collection of stuffed birds.

Of the eight schools under discussion, none has decent clinical opportunities. The
New York school can send three students twice weekly to the Sydenham Hospital;
the Cincinnati school is affiliated with the Seton Hospital, with 24 available beds,

lLoc. dt., p. 268.

*One each at Los Angeles, Kansas City (Kansas), St Louis, Lincoln (Nebraska), Cincinnati, New
York City, and two at Atlanta.

MEDICAL SECTS 168

80 to 90 per cent surgical, and can send its men to look on at the public clinics
given in the City Hospital; the St. Louis students have a day a week at the City
Hospital and profit occasionally elsewhere through professorial connection. All this
is criminally inadequate, yet it is the best that the eclectics offer; for the other five
schools have literally nothing at all. One of the Atlanta " colleges'" is connected with
a private infirmary ; the other has not even such a semblance. The Los Angeles school
claims " private hospitals only ; " the Kansas City school claims to give clinics at the
new City Hospital, but the hospital authorities deny it. At Lincoln " there are no
regular hours at any hospital ; they depend on cases as they turn up."

The dispensaries may be even more briefly described. The Atlanta, Lincoln, and
Los Angeles schools have none at all. The Cincinnati school uses poorly the small
dispensary at the Seton Hospital. The New York school has three rooms in its own
building and access to another dispensary. At St. Louis there is one room and " some
one comes almost every day ; " at Kansas City, one room likewise, with a present daily
attendance of three and a confident aspiration that this number can be swelled to six.

The utter hopelessness of the future of these schools is apparent on a glance at
their financial condition. All are dependent on fees. Only three of them — the New
York, the Cincinnati, and one Atlanta school — enjoy an income between $5000 and
$8500 J a year; the St. Louis, Lincoln, and second Atlanta schools have something
over $3000 1 annually ; those at Los Angeles and Kansas City not much above $1000 ; 1
and these modest sums are not always spent within the schools. Statistics confirm the
unfavorable prognosis : the ten schools which the sect possessed in 1901 have now
dwindled to eight ; a maximum enrolment of 1014 in 1904 has already shrunk to 413 ;
graduates numbered 186 in 1906, 84 in 1909.

So far as sectarian creeds go, there is, of course, no reason why these schools should
be elaborately equipped for scientific instruction. They talk of laboratories, not be-
cause they appreciate their place or significance, but because it pays them to defer
thus far to the spirit of the times. Culpable indeed they are, however, for their utter
failure to make good what their own tenets prescribe. The eclectics are drug mad ;
yet, with the exception of the Cincinnati and New York schools, none of them can
do justice to its own creed. For they are not equipped to teach the drugs or the drug
therapy which constitutes their sole reason for existence.2

The eight osteopathic schools3 fairly reek with commercialism. Their catalogues are
a mass of hysterical exaggerations, alike of the earning and of the curative power of
osteopathy. It is impossible to say upon which score the " science " most confidently
appeals to the crude boys or disappointed men and women whom it successfully

1 Estimated.

2 The physio-medical sect can be dismissed in a note. It had three schools in 1907; only one, that in
Chicago, is left. The reader will find it described in Part II, under Illinois, no. (11). There were 149
physio-medical students in 1904; there are now 52; there were 20 graduates in that year, 15 in 1909.

3 One school is found in each of the following cities: Chicago, Des Moines, Kirksville (Missouri),
Kansas City (Missouri), Philadelphia, Cambridge (Massachusetts), and two at Los Angeles.

164 MEDICAL EDUCATION

exploits. "In no case has a competent osteopath made a failure in his attempt to build
up a paying practice. . . . His remuneration, counted in dollars, will be greatly in excess
of what he could reasonably expect in most other lines of professional work." l " It is
only fair to say that many of our graduates are earning as much in single months
as they were formerly able to earn by a full year's work." 8 " The average osteopath
has a better practice than ninety out of every hundred medical practitioners.1"8 " A
lucrative practice is assured to every conscientious and capable practitioner." * "The
graduate who does not make as much as the total cost of his osteopathic education
in his first year of practice is the exception." 6 Standards these concerns have none ;
the catalogues touch that point very tenderly. At the parent school at Kirksville an
applicant will be accepted " if he pass examinations in English, arithmetic, history,
and geography ;" but if he should fail to meet these lofty scholastic requirements,
he may be admitted anyway. In Massachusetts — the most homogeneously educated
state in the Union — the Cambridge school diplomatically posits that " a diploma
may be accepted or an examination be required if deemed advisable by the directors,"
— the word " is " being conspicuous by its absence ; the Pacific College, " chancing
it," finds that " most make good."

Whatever his notions on the subject of treatment, the osteopath needs to be trained
to recognize disease and to differentiate one disease from another quite as carefully as
any other medical practitioner. Our account of the sect proceeds wholly from this point
of view. Whether they use drugs or do not use them, whether some use them while
others do not, does not affect this fundamental question. Whatever they do, they must
know the body, in health and disease, before they can possibly know whether there
is an occasion for osteopathic intervention, and if so, at what point, to what extent, etc.
All physicians, summoned to see the sick, are confronted with precisely the same crisis :
a body out of order. No matter to what remedial procedure they incline, — medical,
surgical, or manipulative, — they must first ascertain what is the trouble. There is only
one way to do that. The osteopaths admit it, when they teach physiology, pathology,
chemistry, microscopy. Let it be stated, therefore, with all possible emphasis that no
one of the eight osteopathic schools is in position to give such training as osteopathy it-
self demands. The entire course is only three years. In so simple and fundamental a mat-
ter as anatomy — assuredly the corner-stone of a "science" that relies wholly on local
manipulation — they are fatally defective. At Kirksville the accommodations are en-
tirely unequal to the teaching of its huge student body. Hence the first year is devoted
to text-book study of anatomy, part of the second year to dissection ; at Kansas City
they consider that the student dissects better if he has learned anatomy first: hence

1 Catalog**, Pacific College of Osteopathy, 1909-10, p. 9.

1 Catalogue, Los Angeles College of Osteopathy, 1909-10, p. 9.

^Catalogue, Central College of Osteopathy, 1908-9, p. 22.

« Catalog**, Philadelphia College of Osteopathy, 1909-10, p. 48.

• Catalogue, Massachusetts College of Osteopathy, 1909-10, p. 10.

MEDICAL SECTS 165

dissection comes in the latter half of the course, being completed just one-half year
before graduation. The supply of material is also scant : the school had had one ca-
daver early in the fall and was looking ahead to a second the latter part of the
winter. The Los Angeles college has a small room with five tables for a student body
numbering 250; it solves the difficulty by giving separate squads two hours a week
each. At Philadelphia the department of anatomy occupies an outhouse, whence the
noisome odor of decaying cadavers permeates the premises. Other subjects fare even
worse. A small chemical laboratory is occasionally seen, — at Philadelphia it happens
to be in a dark cellar. At Kirksville a fair-sized room is devoted to pathology and
bacteriology ; the huge classes are divided into bands of 32, each of which gets a six
weeks1 course, following the directions of a rigid syllabus under a teacher who is
himself a student. At Cambridge pathology comes in the last year. A professor in
the Kansas City school said of his own institution that it had practically no labora-
tories at all ; the Still College at Des Moines has, in place of laboratories, laboratory
signs; the Littlejohn at Chicago, whose catalogue avers that the "physician should
be imbued with a knowledge of the healing art in its widest fields, and here is the
opportunity," 1 has lately in rebuilding wrecked all its laboratories but that of chem-
istry without in the least interfering with its usual pedagogic routine.2

Nowhere is there the faintest effort to connect the "laboratory teaching " with
"clinical osteopathy ; " perhaps because no school has anything approaching the re-
quisite clinical opportunities. Once more, their tenets are not in question. Much dif-
ference of opinion prevails among them as to whether they should teach everything or
only some things; as to whether they may use drugs in certain conditions or must
confine themselves wholly to manipulation for " osteopathic lesions." Howeverthis may
be, the osteopath cannot learn his technique and when it is applicable, except through
experience with ailing individuals. And these, for the most part, he begins to see
only when his prosperity begins after receiving his "D.O." degree. The Kirksville
school (560 students) has indeed a hospital of 54 beds, of which, however, only 20
are in the wards, and practically all are surgical. Eight obstetrical cases were obtained
in April and May of last year. The Des Moines and Kansas City schools have no
hospitals at all; the students see no acute cases "unless the doctors can take them
along." The Pacific College has a hospital of from twelve to fifteen surgical and ob-
stetrical beds, all pay ; " the students have no regular work at the hospital as there
are so few acute cases; they don't see as much acute work as they should, but they
treat everything." The Littlejohn (Chicago) has also a pay hospital, of 20 beds,
mostly surgical. The Philadelphia school, whose "opportunities for practical work"
are highly extolled in its catalogue, has an infirmary with three beds, occupied by

1 Bulletin, June 15, 1909, p. 7.

'This school teaches medicine as well as osteopathy. It offers instruction in materia medica and

therapeutics, practice of medicine, — and yet it is a three-year school.

166 MEDICAL EDUCATION

maternity cases if at all ; the Cambridge student must travel an hour or more to the
Chelsea Hospital, a pay institution of from ten to fifteen rooms.

The mercenary character of osteopathic instruction is nowhere more conspicuously
displayed than in the dispensaries, designed in theory to turn a humanitarian im-
pulse to educational account. The osteopathic schools insert a cash nexus : the patients
almost always pay. At Kansas City students give treatment to patients who pay
three dollars a month; those paying more are treated by the professors. At Kirks-
ville two dollars a treatment is charged. The cases are mostly chronics, an instructor
being present at the first treatment; afterwards, only if summoned. At Los Angeles
the cheapest obtainable treatment is three dollars for " examination " and one month's
treatment before the class; at Des Moines the "professor administers to high-priced
patients, the students to others."

The eight osteopathic schools now enroll over 1300 students, who pay some $200,000
annually in fees. The instruction furnished for this sum is inexpensive and worthless.
Not a single full-time teacher is found in any of them. The fees find their way di-
rectly into the pockets of the school owners, or into school buildings and infirmaries
that are equally their property. No effort is anywhere made to utilize prosperity as
a means of defining an entrance standard or developing the "science."1 Granting all
that its champions claim, osteopathy is still in its incipiency. If sincere, its votaries
would be engaged in critically building it up. They are doing nothing of the kind.
Indeed, in none of the sectarian schools does one observe progressive effort even along
the lines of its own creed. And very naturally : dogma is sufficient unto itself. It may
not search its own assumptions ; it does well to adopt from the outside, after forced
restatement in its own terms.2

In dealing with the medical sectary, society can employ no special device. Certain
profound characteristics in one way or another support the medical dissenter : now,
the primitive belief in magic crops up in his credulous respect for an impotent drug;
again, all other procedure having failed, what is there to lose by flinging one's self
upon the mercy of chance? Instincts so profound cannot be abolished by statute. But
the limits within which they can play may be so regulated as to forbid alike their
commercial and their crudely ignorant exploitation. The law may require that all
practitioners of the healing art comply with a rigidly enforced preliminary educa-
tional standard; that every school possess the requisite facilities; that every licensed
physician demonstrate a practical knowledge of the body and its affections. To these
terms no reasonable person can object; the good sense of society can enforce them
upon reasonable and unreasonable alike. From medical sects that can live on these
conditions, the public will suffer little more harm than it is destined to suffer any-
how from the necessary incompleteness of human knowledge and the necessary defects
of human skill.

1 At the Pacific College of Osteopathy alone were two workers doing some research.
3 In this fashion homeopathy handles serum-therapy as a case of similars.

CHAPTER XI

THE STATE BOARDS

THE state boards are the instruments through which the reconstruction of medical
education will be largely effected. To them the graduate in medicine applies for the
license to practise. Their power can be both indirectly and directly exerted. They may
after examination reject an applicant, — an indirect method of discrediting the school
which has vouched for him by conferring its M.D. degree. A small percentage of
failures the doctrine of chance would lead one to expect ; an increasing proportion
must cast increasingly serious doubt on any institution. A more direct and therefore
more salutary method is needed, however, in dealing with schools bad beyond a
reasonable doubt. In such instances the board should summarily refuse to entertain
the applicant's petition because his medical education rests upon no proper prelim-
inary training or was received under conditions that forbade thorough or conscientious
instruction : the full weight of its refusal would fall with crushing effect upon the
school which sent him forth. No institution can long survive the day upon which it
is thus publicly branded as feeble, unfit, or disreputable. For the purpose, however,
of saving the victims whose cruel disappointment will in time destroy these schools,
the arm of the state boards should for the present go beyond the rejection of individ-
uals to the actual closing up of notoriously incompetent institutions. The law that
protects the public against the unfit doctor should in fairness protect the student
against the unfit school.

With the manifold duties and responsibilities of the state boards we cannot here
fully deal. Our attention is necessarily confined to their educational function. They
examine candidates for license ; but admission to examination should be granted only
after a fair presumption of intellectual fitness in favor of the applicant has been es-
tablished by the record of his preliminary education, and a fair presumption of suffi-
cient professional training by his graduation from a recognized or reputable medical
school. Neither of these points can for the present be overlooked. So long as the
medical school has as such no determinate position in the school system, the public
health authorities must be empowered to fix at least the lowest point to which it can
safely be permitted to fall ; moreover, so long as any group of physicians may in most
states incorporate a medical school under general laws that offer no safeguard at all,
and license examinations are not yet deliberately constructed to frustrate their ac-
tivity, summary protective power against mercenary and incompetent faculties must
be lodged somewhere. The boards therefore touch at three points the problems with
which this report has dealt : for they deal (1 ) with the preliminary educational require-
ment, (2) with the facilities of medical schools, (3) with examinations for licensure.

In all these respects, the scope of the state board is of course determined by statute.
Let us consider briefly what powers in respect to each are needed if the boards are

168 MEDICAL EDUCATION

to be effective in the reconstruction to which we look forward.

(1) However the educational prerequisite be defined, the board must be authorized
to insist upon it as an educational, and not as a practice, preliminary. The sole reason
for a preliminary requirement of any kind is as a method of restricting the study of
medicine to those in whose favor an initial presumption of fitness exists. An ordi-
nary secondary school education may be taken as indicating minimum competency
only if it chronologically precede admission to the medical school. As a matter of
fact, some state boards legally empowered to enforce the high school basis are often
strangely careless as to the significance of dates ; so that a requirement whose sole
value resides in its priority to medical education is held to be satisfied if fulfilled
just prior to graduation or to licensure.

The evaluation of preliminary credentials is a task requiring expert knowledge
and experience. Certain boards have striven hard to discharge this function effectively ;
but they lack an organization competent to deal with it. It may be that as the
feasibility of federated action is increased by an approach to uniformity in laws and
ideals, a central authority can be constituted by voluntary cooperation of the state
boards, maintained by contributions from their several funds, and charged with the
business of procuring first-hand information respecting secondary schools and col-
leges. Such an agency could, by communication with the proper educational organi-
zations engaged in the study and improvement of secondary schools, command reliable
data for the evaluation of credentials prior to matriculation. In default thereof, the
board of each state, instead of endeavoring to act on such knowledge as it can ob-
tain, should get at once into effective relations with the state university, or with some
endowed institution accustomed to pass upon questions of this kind ; and the medi-
cal schools should be compelled to have a student's application " vised " by the state
board before matriculation is regarded as complete. If neither time nor subject credit
could be given by the medical school for any work prior to completed matriculation,
an actual four-year high school preliminary requirement would be in force.1

(2) The enforcement of even the four-year high school standard will so far clean
up the medical field that the state boards will at once be relieved of the duty of
dealing with actually disreputable schools. Until that has been accomplished, these
boards should be empowered to refuse applications from the graduates of schools
scandalously defective in teaching facilities. The power here in question, if extended
too far, would involve serious dangers. For boards authorized to decide whether
schools are satisfactory may be led to specify the details which determine their judg-
ment. In some quarters they have already shown a tendency to prescribe minutely
the contents of a proper medical education. Their motive has been excellent ; they
have tried to compel poor schools to give a good education. Unfortunately, that is
quite impossible: teachers may sign a register showing due attendance upon their
classes, just as students may scrupulously attend specified exercises in every essen-
1Thc same process can be employed in the south to enforce whatever standard is there decided on.

THE STATE BOARDS 169

tial branch for a fixed number of hours; but the instruction will probably be no
whit improved by such police regulation. Meanwhile every competent and earnest
instructor is seriously hampered by the vain effort to aid those who are beyond hu-
man help. The fact is that an enforced entrance requirement at one end and a proper
examination at the other will of themselves limit the survival of schools to those that
are financially and educationally competent. Only so long as an entrance requirement
cannot be enforced or a proper examination arranged, do the state boards need the
power to close schools obviously and notoriously defective.

(3) The examination 1 for licensure is indubitably the lever with which the entire
field may be lifted ; for the power to examine is the power to destroy. At present,
these examinations are not only without stimulating effect; they are actually depress-
ing. There is only one sort of licensing test that is significant, viz., a test that ascer-
tains the practical ability of the student confronting a concrete case to collect all
relevant data and to suggest the positive procedure applicable to the conditions
disclosed. A written examination may have some incidental value; it does not touch
the heart of the matter. It tends, indeed, to do just the reverse. Written examinations
are notably apt to follow beaten paths. A collection of state board examinations
covering even a brief period of years will contain most of the questions that will be
asked hereafter. An effective, but purely mechanical and entirely useless drill may be
employed to make examination-proof a student who in the presence of a sick person
would be quite helpless. As a matter of fact, prominent publishers put forth "State
Board Questions" and "Quiz-compends" with " answers." These manuals, well conned,
guarantee the candidate's safety. Do not the several states appear to do almost
everything in their power to resist the production of a well trained body of physi-
cians? In the first place, they permit a half-dozen men to start a medical school as
lightly as they permit them to open a printing-shop; and they then offer them every
inducement to furnish poor training by permitting the graduates to undergo an ex-
amination for which they can satisfactorily prepare by an inexpensive drill that has
no bearing on the practical ends for which doctors are needed. A proper examination
would go far to correct all the defects that this report has sought to point out. For
low entrance standards, deficient equipment, bad teaching, lack of clinical material,
failure to correlate laboratory and clinic, would be detected and punished by a
searching practical examination.

If the written examination were relegated to a subordinate position, the weight of
the test would fall upon the applicant's ability to do things; schools incapable for
whatever reason of training students in the necessary technique would be rapidly ex-
posed through the annual publication of statistics proclaiming their failure. The
state board results, now so frequently misleading, would be a trustworthy index which
the more intelligent students would carefully scan; and those schools only would sur-

1 For an excellent discussion, see Councilman : " Methods and Objects of State Board Examinations,"
Journal of American Medical Association, Aug. 14, 1909, pp. 515-19.

170 MEDICAL EDUCATION

vive whose records entitle them to live. Of such overwhelming importance, indeed,
is the character of the license examination that, if thorough practical examinations
were instituted, all the other perplexing details we have discussed would become rel-
atively immaterial.

How far we now are from this ideal realized in other countries, hardly aspired
to in America, a few facts make plain. In 1906, the worst of the Chicago schools —
a school with no entrance requirement, no laboratory teaching, no hospital connec-
tions— made before state boards the best record attained by any Chicago school in
that year. This school, essentially the same now as then, has only recently been de-
clared "not in good standing" with the state board of Illinois. Everywhere in Can-
ada and the United States wretched institutions refute criticism by pointing to their
successful state board records. Halifax and Western University candidates pass in
Canada side by side with students from McGill and Toronto, though not in an equal
proportion; for even in the written examination, better opportunities tell in the long
run. Good didactic teaching at Bowdoin or Dartmouth proves capable of satisfying
examinations that should strongly stress clinical experience. One or two of the states
have latterly begun to introduce certain practical features into their examinations.
These timid beginnings are hopeful signs, as yet, however, hardly extensive enough
anywhere materially to affect either the kind of teaching employed or the outcome
of the examination. The army and navy have gone a little further towards develop-
ing a practical examination than has any state board; and their written tests are
probably also more severe; with the result that between the years 1900 and 1909,
46 per cent of graduated doctors applying for the naval medical corps failed; between
1904 and 1909, 81 per cent of the applicants for the Marine Hospital service failed;
and out of 1512 candidates for the army medical corps between 1888 and 1909,
72 per cent failed:1 this, although very few of the applicants examined came from
the unmitigatedly bad schools.

To do their duty fiilly, the state boards require to be properly constituted, orga-
nized, and equipped. At present none of them fulfils all these conditions. In conse-
quence it is difficult to know where to lodge responsibility. In some states the law
is BO weak that a board can be successfully "mandamused" the moment it raises a
finger. Elsewhere, a good law is practically negatived by the inactivity, if not worse,
of a board that excuses itself by the apathy of the public or by the " pull " of the medi-
cal schools. In general the boards have not been strongly constituted. In many states
appointments are regarded as political spoils; quite generally teachers are ineligible
for appointment. It happens, therefore, that the boards are sometimes weak, and
either unwilling to antagonize the schools or legally incapable of so doing; again,
well meaning but incompetent; in some cases unquestionably neither weak nor well

1 For the records upon which these statements are based, acknowledgments are due to the Surgeon-
General of the Navy, the Surgeon-General of the Marine Hospital Service, and to the Surgeon-Gen-
eral of the Army, respectively.

THE STATE BOARDS 171

meaning, but cunning, powerful, and closely aligned with selfish and harmful politi-
cal interests. In a few instances, that stand out, the boards are vigorous, intelligent,
and public spirited, — notably in Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota.

In the matter of organization they are decidedly defective. The whole weight rests
usually upon a single executive officer, the secretary, whose sole staff consists of a
stenographer, if that. As long as everything depends on the personality of a single
individual, administration will be liable to marked fluctuations. There can be neither
security nor continuity. For enlightened public opinion and accepted ideals have not
as yet established definite and correct policy. Organization would within limits be
independent of individuals ; for it embodies a routine that fortifies every gain won,
and makes possible the division of labor that is indispensable to system and thor-
oughness.

A bureau properly organized cannot live on small fees. It requires liberal support ;
for it must be in position to take trouble to secure information and to defend its
rights. The power that validates the diploma with its license must have the strength
to protect its issues against either debasement or infringement. The physician, like
the lawyer, is an agent of the state. If he proves unworthy, the same board that
vouched for him must have power to recall its act ; and its function must extend to
the prosecution of fraudulent or unwarranted attempts to practise without its official
sanction. Any effort to exercise powers of recall or restraint will of course be resisted.
The state must therefore provide funds that will enable the board to defend its action
in the courts.

A model state board law must therefore guard the following points: the member-
ship of the board must be drawn from the best elements of the profession, including
— not, as now, prohibiting — those engaged in teaching; the board must be armed
with the authority and machinery to institute practical examinations, to refuse
recognition to unfit schools, and to insist upon such preliminary educational stand-
ards as the state's own educational system warrants ; finally, it must be provided either
by appropriation or by greatly increased fees with funds adequate to .perform effi-
ciently the functions for which it was created. The additional powers needed in order
to deal as effectively with the practice of medicine, lie outside the present discussion.

Far-reaching legislative changes would be required in most states before the state
boards could play the part here assigned to them. Yet for it they are clearly des-
tined. As a matter of fact, recent legislation has been self-contradictory. The boards
have been strengthened, their powers more satisfactorily defined ; and thereupon the
end thus sought has been partially defeated by the creation of sectarian boards with
lower standards and looser ideas. Minnesota, for example, obtained an excellent
law, consolidated the medical schools of the state, established a high standard, and
quarantined against invasion by a low-grade product from without ; and then, having
fairly secured for the people of the state the best attainable conditions in the mat-
ter of protecting the public health, it proceeded partly to undo the good work by es-

172 MEDICAL EDUCATION

tablishing a separate osteopathic board with power to license osteopaths — who will
treat all diseases, and quite possibly in all sorts of ways — according to standards
and methods fundamentally at variance with the main statute already outlined. The
creation of separate boards is thus a roundabout method of recommitting the errors
that the main currents of scientific thinking and effort are endeavoring to remedy.
Our forty-nine states and territories have now eighty-two different boards of medi-
cal examiners. The province of the state in this matter is plain. It cannot allow one
set of practitioners to exist on easier and lower terms than another. It cannot indeed
be a party to scientific or sectarian controversy. But it can and must safeguard the con-
ditions upon which such controversy may be fought to its finish. The mooted points
concern only therapeutics; in respect to all else there is complete agreement. If matters
in dispute are omitted from the examination, enough is left for all essential pur-
poses. A single board should subject all candidates, of whatever school, to the same
tests at every point. The license of the state is a guarantee of knowledge, education,
and skill. The layman is in no position to make allowances. The state's M.D. and
the state's D.O. offer themselves for essentially the same purposes. The state stands
equally as guarantor of both. No citizen can indeed be wholly protected by the state
against his own ignorance, fanaticism, or folly. A man who does not "believe" in
doctors cannot be forced to call them in or to heed them, any more than a man who
does not "believe" in wearing rubbers can be compelled to don them in slushy
weather. The state is powerless there. But having undertaken to vise practising physi-
cians for the protection of those who summon them, it must see to it that the
licenses to which it gives currency bear a fairly uniform value. Between the graduate of
Harvard and the graduate of the Boston College of Physicians and Surgeons, the
layman could not judge even if he knew the origin of each; as a matter of fact, he
rarely knows so much. But in the act of licensing both for one purpose, the state
assures its citizens of their substantial equality. It is shocking to reflect that, what
with written examinations and separate boards, the divergencies run all the way from
a high degree of competency to utter ignorance and unfitness.

There is no question that in the end the medical sects will disappear. The dissenter
cannot live on high entrance and educational standards. Pending his disappearance,
the combination board is the least of the evils to which we are liable. The terms upon
which these boards are now obtainable throw a strong light on the backward state of
public opinion. In New York state, homeopaths, eclectics, and osteopaths, making
together but a negligible proportion of the practising physicians of the state, have
together a majority on the state examining board.

Under existing conditions, though the state boards might well be constituted on
a uniform plan and with the same powers, a certain degree of diversity is unavoid-
able; but a certain degree of inevitable diversity is no excuse for hopeless confusion.
The variations now found both in the laws and in their administration are fairly
chaotic. In one state the board can and does fix entrance requirements; in the next

THE STATE BOARDS 173

it can, but does not; in a third it neither does nor can. Six boards1 have announced
the requirement of one or more years of college work preliminary to medical school-
ing as the basis of practice in their respective states; but seventy-six remain to be
converted. Their conversion, with the necessary changes in the state laws, must pre-
cede the actual elevation of the entire medical profession. For though agreed eleva-
tion of standard by individual schools improves their own product and indirectly
leavens the mass, it does not stop the making of low-grade doctors. Temporarily it
even assists the low-grade school. The ultimate improvement of the entire mass will
come from control of all schools through the state boards, and not merely from vol-
untary action on the part of the more self-respecting institutions. The middle west
seems likely — the osteopaths permitting — first to realize this condition; for the
states will surely not leave the practice of medicine within their borders open to
strangers on terms denied to their own sons.

Whether or not it will be left for the osteopaths to say, depends just now on mak-
ing the public appreciate the fact that the point at issue is not a matter of business.
A clever hue and cry has been raised to give the controversy the appearance of a
competition between rival claimants for business patronage. The instinct for fair
play, opposition to exclusive or aristocratic privileges, have thus won for the secta-
rian a chance on his own terms. Unfortunately, this leaves the sick man wholly out
of account. Medicine, curative and preventive, has indeed no analogy with business.
Like the army, the police, or the social worker, the medical profession is supported for
a benign, not a selfish, for a protective, not an exploiting, purpose. The knell of the
exploiting doctor has been sounded, just as the day of the freebooter and the soldier
of fortune has passed away.

Despite imperfect and discordant laws and inadequate resources, the state board
has abundantly justified itself. It is indeed hardly more than quarter of a century
old ; yet, in summing up the forces that have within that period made for improved
conditions, the state boards must be prominently mentioned. Their role is likely to
be increasingly important. They have developed considerable esprit de corps. Their
power of combined action on broad lines has distinctly increased even in the last few
years. Reciprocity between states whose laws are measurably concordant and whose
ideals are taking similar shape tends to demonstrate the fundamental sameness of
the problems requiring solution. Out of these first cooperative efforts, a model law
will emerge ; federated action may become possible. Perhaps the entire country may
some day be covered by a national organization engaged in protecting the public
health against the formidable combination made by ignorance, incompetency, com-
mercialism, and disease.

1 Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Connecticut, Colorado, Kansas.

CHAPTER XII

THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

THE postgraduate school as developed in the United States may be characterized
as a "compensatory adjustment." It is an effort to mend a machine that was pre-
destined to break down. Inevitably, the more conscientious and intelligent men
trained in most of the medical schools herein described must become aware of their
unfitness for the responsibilities of medical practice; the postgraduate school was
established to do what the medical school had failed to accomplish.

"When I graduated in the spring of 1869," says Dr. John A. Wyeth,1 "I can
never forget the sinking feeling that came over me when I realized how incompetent
I was to undertake the care of those in the distress of sickness or accident. A week
later, after arriving in my native village in Alabama, I rented a small office and at-
tached my sign to the front door. Within two months, the tacks were withdrawn by
the hand which had placed them there and the sign was stowed away in the bottom of
my trunk. Two months of hopeless struggle with a Presbyterian conscience had con-
vinced me that I was not fit to practise medicine, and that nothing was left for me
but to go out into the world of business to earn money enough to complete my edu-
cation. I felt the absolute need of clinical experience, and a conviction, which then
forced itself upon my mind, that no graduate in medicine was competent to practise
until he had had, in addition to his theoretical, a clinical and laboratory training, was
the controlling idea in my mind when, in later years the opportunity offered, it fell
to my good fortune to establish in this city the New York Polyclinic Medical School
and Hospital."

The postgraduate school was thus originally an undergraduate repair shop. Its
instruction was necessarily at once elementary and practical. There was no time to
go back to fundamentals; it was too late to raise the question of preliminary edu-
cational competency. Urgency required that in the shortest possible time the young
physician already involved in responsibility should acquire the practical technique
which the medical school had failed to impart. The courses were made short, fre-
quently covering less than a month ; and they aimed preeminently to teach the young
doctor what to " do " in the various emergencies of general practice.

As the general level of medical education has risen, the function of these insti-
tutions has been somewhat modified. The general course, aiming to make good de-
ficiencies at large, has tended to give way to special courses adapted to the needs of
those inclined to devote themselves more or less exclusively to some particular line
of work. Simultaneously, as the facilities of the schools have enlarged, they have be-
come centers to which at intervals men practising in isolated places may return for

1 Proceedingt of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Atsociation of American Medical CoUeget,
pp. 25, 26 (abridged).

THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL 175

brief periods in order to catch up with the times. Once more the training offered is
of a practical, not of a fundamental or intensive, kind. It is calculated to "teach the
trick" — or, perhaps better, to exhibit an instructor in the act of doing it. For, as
nothing is known of individuals in the stream of students who course through the
schools, it is impossible to give them an active share in the work that goes on at the
bedside or in the operating-room. Their part is mainly passive ; they look on at expert
diagnosticians or operators. The danger of permitting an unknown student, tarrying
for a brief stay, to participate at close range is prohibitive. In surgery the so-called
practical courses are not usually worked out in such fashion that cadaver work, animal
work, and service as dresser might prepare for actual participation : the school lacks
means and facilities ; the students lack the time. In medicine the absence of sufficient
material, the lack of proper hospital organization and equipment, the scrappiness of
professional service, combine to prevent a systematic, thorough, and intimate discipline.

Of the thirteen postgraduate schools,1 the best of them reflect the conditions and
purposes above described. The Postgraduate and Polyclinic of New York and the
Polyclinic of Philadelphia command large dispensary services and considerable hos-
pital clinics, partly in their own hospitals, partly in public and private hospitals in
the city. No unkind criticism is intended when the teaching is characterized as too
immediately practical to be scientifically stimulating: it has the air of handicraft,
rather than science. Comparatively little is done in internal medicine: surgery and
the specialties predominate. The courses, being practical and definite, are discon-
nected ; the faculties are huge and unorganized. In the main, demonstrative instruc-
tion is offered to small bodies of physicians, who come and go uninterruptedly through
the year. Only one of the three — the Philadelphia school — has a laboratory build-
ing, and in that no advanced work is in progress ; the two New York schools have
laboratory space or equipment adequate only to routine clinical examinations. The
teaching is in the main more elementary than the upper class instruction of a good
undergraduate school of medicine. It is, of course, also at times more special in
character. With the exception of the New York Postgraduate, these schools are with-
out endowment: they live on fees, donations, and hospital receipts.

Two departmental postgraduate schools are conducted by the government at
Washington for those accepted for service in the army or navy medical corps. Eligible
for these appointments are graduated physicians who have had a year of hospital
experience or three years of practice. Excellent practical instruction is furnished by
way of supplementing the usual undergraduate course. The needs of the services can

1 Four are situated in Greater New York : (1) The New York Polyclinic Medical School, (2) New York
Postgraduate Medical School, (3) Brooklyn Postgraduate Medical School, (4) Manhattan Eye, Ear,
and Throat Postgraduate School ; four in Chicago : (5) Postgraduate Medical School, (6) The Chicago
Polyclinic, (7) Illinois Postgraduate Medical School, (8} Chicago Ear, Eye, Nose, and Throat College;
one each in Philadelphia, (9) The Philadelphia Polyclinic; Kansas City, (10) Postgraduate Medical
School; New Orleans, (11) New Orleans Polyclinic (affiliated with Tulane University); and two in
Washington, (12) Array Medical School, (13) Navy Medical School. A number of schools offer special
courses to graduates, in special summer and regular winter sessions.

176 MEDICAL EDUCATION

be very definitely formulated ; the course worked out aims to meet them. The ac-
cepted surgeons get in this way a concentrated practical drill in bacteriology, hygiene,
and military surgery. The laboratories are excellently equipped, though cramped
for space. The army school enjoys the advantage of contact with the great library and
museum of the surgeon-general's office. The schools, as yet in their infancy, may not
improbably develop into research laboratories dealing with the specific problems that
crop up in naval and military service in various quarters of the globe.

Postgraduate, like other schools, vary in character. We have spoken of the best.
The others are weak concerns wearing a commercial hue. The Brooklyn Postgraduate
School, for instance, entertains less than half a dozen students on the average at
a time, in a wretched hospital, really a death-trap, heavily laden with debt, and
without laboratory equipment enough to make an ordinary clinical examination ; the
Kansas City affair had, when visited, no students in its improvised hospital contain-
ing 25 ward beds, only 13 of them occupied ; it ekes out its opportunities with clinics
at the public hospital. Chicago, varied and picturesque in this as in all else pertain-
ing to medical education, supports four postgraduate institutions. None of them has
a satisfactory plant. All are stock companies. Only unmistakable scientific activity
could dislodge the unpleasant suspicion of commercial motive thus suggested. No such
activity is in any of them observable. A cynical candor admits in one place that "it
pays the teachers through referred cases ; " in another, " it establishes the reputation
of a man to teach in a postgraduate school ; " in a third, " it pays through advertising
teachers." In one a youth was observed working with a microscope. Inquiry elicited
the fact that he was the teacher of clinical laboratory technique, lecturing in the
absence of the "professor." The following dialogue took place:

" Are you a doctor ? "

"No."

" A student of medicine ? "

"Yes."

"Where?"

" At the Jenner Night School"

" In what year ? "

"The first"

A first-year student of medicine in a night school was thus laboratory instructor and
pro tempore lecturing professor in clinical microscopy in the Chicago Polyclinic.

Improved medical education will undoubtedly cut the ground from under the in-
dependent postgraduate school as we know it. This is not to say that the undergrad-
uate medical curriculum will exhaust the field. On the contrary, the undergraduate
school will do only the elementary work ; but that it will do, not needing subsequent
and more elementary instruction to patch it up. Graduate instruction will be advanced
and intensive, — the natural prolongation of the elective courses now coming into
vogue. For productive investigation and intensive instruction, the medical school will

THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL 177

use its own teaching hospital and laboratories; for the elaboration of really thorough
training in specialties resting on a solid undergraduate education, it may use the
great municipal hospitals of the larger cities. But advanced instruction along these
lines will not thrive in isolation. It will be but the upper story of a university de-
partment of medicine. The postgraduate schools of the better type can hasten this
evolution by incorporating themselves in accessible universities, taking up univer-
sity ideals, and submitting to reorganization on university lines.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MEDICAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN

MEDICAL education is now, in the United States and Canada, open to women upon
practically the same terms as men. If all institutions do not receive women, so many
do, that no woman desiring an education in medicine is under any disability in find-
ing a school to which she may gain admittance. Her choice is free and varied. She will
find schools of every grade accessible : the Johns Hopkins, if she has an academic
degree; Cornell, if she has three-fourths of one; Rush and the state universities, if
she prefers the combined six years' course; Toronto on the basis of a high school
education; Meridian, Mississippi, if she has had no definable education at all.

Woman has so apparent a function in certain medical specialties and seemingly so
assured a place in general medicine under some obvious limitations that the struggle
for wider educational opportunities for the sex was predestined to an early success in
medicine. It is singular to observe the use to which the victory has been put. The
following tables show recent developments in coeducational and in women's medical
schools taken separately:

Number of Coeducational Number of Number of

Year Medical School* Women Students Women Graduates

1904 97 946 198

1905 96 852 165

1906 90 706 200

1907 86 718 172

1908 88 649 139

1909 91 752 129

Women's Number of Number of

Year Medical Schools Students Graduates

1904 3 183 56

1905 3 221 54

1906 3 189 33

1907 3 210 39

1908 3 186 46

1909 3 169 33

COMBINED

Number of Number of Number of

Year Schools Women Students Women Graduates

1904 100 1129 254

1905 99 1073 219

1906 93 895 233

1907 89 928 211

1908 91 835 185

1909 94 921 162

Now that women are freely admitted to the medical profession, it is clear that
they show a decreasing inclination to enter it. More schools in all sections are open
to them ; fewer attend and fewer graduate. True enough, medical schools generally
have shrunk ; but as the opportunities of women have increased, not decreased, and
within a period during which entrance requirements have, so far as they are con-

MEDICAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN 179

cerned, not materially altered, their enrolment should have augmented, if there is
any strong demand for women physicians or any strong ungratified desire on the part
of women to enter the profession. One or the other of these conditions is lacking, —
perhaps both.

Whether it is either wise or necessary to endow separate medical schools for
women is a problem on which the figures used throw light. In the first place, eighty
per cent of women who have in the last six years studied medicine have attended
coeducational institutions. None of the three women^s medical colleges now existing
can be sufficiently strengthened without an enormous outlay. The motives which
elsewhere recommend separation of the sexes would appear to be without force, all
possible allowance being made for the special and somewhat trying conditions in-
volved. In the general need of more liberal support for medical schools, it would
appear that large sums, as far as specially available for the medical education of
women, would accomplish most if used to develop coeducational institutions, in
which their benefits would be shared by men without loss to women students; but, it
must be added, if separate medical schools and hospitals are not to be developed
for women, interne privileges must be granted to women graduates on the same terms
as to men.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MEDICAL EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

THE medical care of the negro race will never be wholly left to negro physicians.
Nevertheless, if the negro can be brought to feel a sharp responsibility for the physi-
cal integrity of his people, the outlook for their mental and moral improvement will
be distinctly brightened. The practice of the negro doctor will be limited to his own
race, which in its turn will be cared for better by good negro physicians than by poor
white ones. But the physical well-being of the negro is not only of moment to the negro
himself. Ten million of them live in close contact with sixty million whites. Not only
does the negro himself suffer from hookworm and tuberculosis; he communicates them
to his white neighbors, precisely as the ignorant and unfortunate white contaminates
him. Self-protection not less than humanity offers weighty counsel in this matter ;
self-interest seconds philanthropy. The negro must be educated not only for his sake,
but for ours. He is, as far as human eye can see, a permanent factor in the nation.
He has his rights and due and value as an individual ; but he has, besides, the tremen-
dous importance that belongs to a potential source of infection and contagion.

The pioneer work in educating the race to know and to practise fundamental
hygienic principles must be done largely by the negro doctor and the negro nurse.
It is important that they both be sensibly and effectively trained at the level at
which their services are now important. The negro is perhaps more easily " taken in "
than the white; and as his means of extricating himself from a blunder are limited,
it is all the more cruel to abuse his ignorance through any sort of pretense. A well-
taught negro sanitarian will be immensely useful ; an essentially untrained negro
wearing an M.D. degree is dangerous.

Make-believe in the matter of negro medical schools is therefore intolerable.
Even good intention helps but little to change their aspect. The negro needs good
schools rather than many schools, — schools to which the more promising of the race
can be sent to receive a substantial education in which hygiene rather than surgery,
for example, is strongly accentuated. If at the same time these men can be imbued
with the missionary spirit so that they will look upon the diploma as a commission
to serve their people humbly and devotedly, they may play an important part in the
sanitation and civilization of the whole nation. Their duty calls them away from
large cities to the village and the plantation, upon which light has hardly as yet
begun to break.

Of the seven medical schools for negroes in the United States,1 five are at this mo-
ment in no position to make any contribution of value to the solution of the problem

'Washington, D.C.: Howard University; New Orleans: Flint Medical College; Raleigh (N.C.):
Leonard Medical School ; Knoxville : Knoxville Medical College ; Memphis : Medical Department of
the University of West Tennessee ; Nashville : Meharry Medical College ; Louisville : National Med-
ical College.

MEDICAL EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 181

above pointed out ; Flint at New Orleans, Leonard at Raleigh, the Knoxville, Mem-
phis, and Louisville schools are ineffectual. They are wasting small sums annually
and sending out undisciplined men, whose lack of real training is covered up by the
imposing M.D. degree.

Meharry at Nashville and Howard at Washington are worth developing, and
until considerably increased benefactions are available, effort will wisely concentrate
upon them. The future of Howard is assured ; indeed, the new Freedman's Hospital
is an asset the like of which is in this country extremely rare. It is greatly to be
hoped that the government may display a liberal and progressive spirit in adapting
the administration of this institution to the requirements of medical education.

Meharry is the creation of one man, Dr. George W. Hubbard, who, sent to the
south at the close of the war on an errand of mercy, has for a half-century devoted
himself singly to the elevation of the negro. The slender resources at his command
have been carefully husbanded ; his pupils have in their turn remembered their obli-
gations to him and to their school. The income of the institution has been utilized
to build it up. The school laboratories are highly creditable to the energy and in-
telligence of Dr. Hubbard and his assistants. The urgent need is for improved clin-
ical facilities — a hospital building and a well equipped dispensary. Efforts now
making to acquire them deserve liberal support.

The upbuilding of Howard and Meharry will profit the nation much more than
the inadequate maintenance of a larger number of schools. They are, of course,
unequal to the need and the opportunity; but nothing will be gained by way of
satisfying the need or of rising to the opportunity through the survival of feeble, ill
equipped institutions, quite regardless of the spirit which animates the promoters.
The subventions of religious and philanthropic societies and of individuals can be
made effective only if concentrated. They must become immensely greater before
they can be safely dispersed.

PART II

MEDICAL SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES
AND CANADA

ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY BY STATES AND PROVINCES
AND SEPARATELY CHARACTERIZED

NOTE : Facts given are at of date when the school wot visited, which
is specified in each case.

The estimates of population have, with the few exceptions noted,
been kindly made by the Director of the Census, through the courtesy
of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

MEDICAL SCHOOLS
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED BY STATES AND PROVINCES

ALABAMA

Population, 2,112,465. Number of physicians, 2287. Ratio, 1: 924.
Number of medical schools, 2.

BIRMINGHAM: Population, 55,945.

BIRMINGHAM MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1894. A stock company, paying annual
dividends of 6 per cent.

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 185, of whom 168 are from Alabama.

Teaching staff: 32, 18 being professors, none of them whole-time teachers.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $14,550 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The teaching of anatomy, for which there is abundant ma-
terial, is limited to dissecting on old-fashioned lines; there is the usual chemical
laboratory and a small outfit for instruction in bacteriology and pathology ; the ma-
terial used for the latter is purchased in the east, not obtained from autopsies or
clinics. No animals are provided for experimental purpose beyond the use of dogs
for surgical work. There are no physiological, pharmacological, or clinical labora-
tories. The building is poorly kept, and there is neither library nor museum.

Clinical facilities: The school adjoins the Hillman Hospital, 98 beds, of which the
faculty has charge during term time. Bedside clinics are held, but the students
make no blood or urine examinations; obstetrical cases are rare; the hospital is
largely given over to surgical patients, — gunshot and other wounds being decid-
edly abundant.

The dispensary service is as yet unorganized.

Date of visit: January, 1909.

MOBILE: Population, 56,335.

MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA. Established 1859. Now an
organic department of the state university, with which, however, its connection is
legal only. The two institutions are at opposite ends of the state, so that the
medical department is practically a local school.

Entrance requirement: Less than three-year high school education.

186 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Attendance: 204.

Teaching staff: 25, of whom 8 are professors. No one devotes full time to medical
instruction.

Resources available for maintenance : The school receives from the state an annual ap-
propriation of $5000, in return for which, however, sixty-seven free scholarships
are given, one to each county ; the school is therefore in effect wholly dependent on
tuition fees, amounting to $17,300, for its support, most of which is paid out in
salaries.

Laboratory facilities : The laboratory equipment is practically limited to inorganic
chemistry, elementary bacteriology and pathology, and anatomy, taught by dis-
secting first the goat, then the human cadaver. The school occupies a well kept
old-fashioned building, recently remodeled. It possesses a few old books, but no
funds with which to add to them ; and a small museum, mostly composed of an-
tiquated wax or papier-mache models.

Clinical facilities: For clinical instruction the school has access to the Sisters' Hos-
pital, 100 beds, the faculty being the staff in term time. The senior students make
blood and urine examinations in connection with clinical cases.

Connected with the college building is a new, well arranged dispensary, for the
conduct of which an appropriation of $50 a month is available.

DaU ofvitit: January, 1909.

General Considerations

THE foregoing account makes it clear that really satisfactory medical education
is not now to be had in Alabama. The entrance standards are low; the schools are
inadequately equipped; and they are without proper financial resources. To get
together their present numbers, standards must be kept low; in consequence, the
medical schools do nothing to promote or to share the secondary school development
of the state. To that and to any higher movement they are likely to be obstacles.
Neither Alabama nor the rest of the south actually needs either school at this time ;
but as the state has become a patron of medical education, it will hardly retire from
the field. Under these circumstances, its policy should aim to bring about a genuine
and effective connection between the medical department and the rest of the state
university. The task of elevating entrance standards in the medical department and
of furnishing a higher quality of scientific training would probably be assisted for the
time being by removing the instruction in the first and second years to the university
itself at Tuscaloosa; for in no other way can whole-time instructors be now procured.
An improvement in the quality of training furnished in the scientific branches will
ultimately compel a higher quality of clinical instruction. It is difficult to see how the
influence or control of the university can in any event be made effective in Mobile,
232 miles distant, at the opposite end of the state, and in a hospital in whose clinical

ARKANSAS 187

management there is no continuity. Birmingham is much closer, being only 56 miles
distant, and promises to offer a larger supply of clinical material. If, therefore, the
state is able to look at the question on its own merits, without regard to the rival
claims of competing towns, it should establish a practice requirement that would
automatically suppress proprietary instruction. For the present, the university might
offer two years' work at Tuscaloosa, reserving to a more propitious time the entire
question of organizing under effective university control a complete medical school
at Birmingham, which is the nearest feasible location. As the state now contains one
physician to every 924 inhabitants, the restriction or suspension of clinical teaching
for some years to come involves no danger to the community.

ARKANSAS

Population, 1,476,582. Number of physicians, 2535. Ratio, 1 : 582.
Number of medical schools, 2.

LITTLE ROCK: Population, 44,931.

(1) MEDICAL DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS. Organized 1879. An indepen-
dent institution, not even "affiliated" with the state university whose name it bears.

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 179, 81 per cent from Arkansas.

Teaching staff: 35, 18 being professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $14,100 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : After an existence of thirty years without any laboratory fa-
cilities except a dissecting-room and a laboratory for inorganic chemistry, a frame
building has recently been supplied with a meager equipment for the teaching of
pathology and bacteriology. The session was, however, already well started and
the new laboratory not yet in operation. No museum, no books, charts, models,
etc., are provided.

Clinical facilities: Hardly more than nominal. The school adjoins the City Hospital,
with a capacity of 30 beds. Froin this hospital patients are brought into the amphi-
theater of the school building. There are no ward visits. The students see no con-
tagious diseases; obstetrical work is precarious; of post-mortems there is no mention.
There is a small dispensary, of whose attendance no record is procurable.

Date ofvirit: November, 1909.

(2) COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. Organized 1906. An independent organi-
zation, formed by men not in the older school.

188 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 81, 59 per cent from Arkansas.

Teaching staff': 34, 25 being professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $6450 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : Separate, recently organized, and very disorderly laboratories
for pathology, bacteriology, and chemistry, which with pharmacy work are all in
charge of a single teacher, who is also pathologist to the County Hospital, three
miles off. He proposes shortly to add physiology. The usual wretched dissecting-
room is also provided. None of the necessary illustrative paraphernalia are at hand
in the shape of books, charts, museum, etc.

Clinical facilities: The faculty of the school controls an adjoining hospital, from
which patients are brought into the amphitheater for demonstration or operation.
At operations it is claimed that students assist. No ward rounds are made. Occa-
sional clinics are also held at two distant hospitals (county and penitentiary).
Obstetrical and acute medical cases are rare; contagious diseases are not seen.
There are no post-mortems. A small daily dispensary attendance is claimed. There
is no adequate dispensary equipment.

Dot* of visit : November, 1909.

General Considerations

BOTH the Arkansas schools are local institutions in a state that has at this date
three times as many doctors as it needs; neither has a single redeeming feature. It is
incredible that the state university should permit its name to shelter one of them.
The general educational interests of the state require that the state university, now
inconveniently located at Fayetteville, should be moved to Little Rock. Once there,
it could probably get possession of both schools and organize something better than
either, which it could improve as its resources increase with the general prosperity
of the state.

CALIFORNIA1

Population, 1,729,543. Number of physicians (exclusive of osteopaths), 4313. Ratio,

1:401.
Number of medical schools, 10.

LOS ANGELES: Population, 116,420.

(1) COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. Established 1903 as an independent

1The Director of the Census states: "The cities of Los Angeles, Oakland, Berkeley, and San Fran-
cisco have had such an exceptionally rapid increase that no estimates of their population have been
prepared." The figures given are taken from the census of 1900.

CALIFORNIA 189

school, it suddenly became, in 1909, nominally the medical department of the
University of Southern California, when the former medical department of that
institution cut loose in order to become the Los Angeles clinical department of
the University of California. The seriousness with which the University of South-
ern California treats medical education may be gathered from this amusing
performance.

Entrance requirement: High school graduation or "equivalent.""
Attendance: 2%.

Teaching staff": 41, 28 being professors. The teachers are practising physicians; no
one gives his entire time to the school.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $4075 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The school is ordinary in type. It possesses a small chemical
laboratory, a single laboratory in common for pathology, histology, and bacteri-
ology, with meager equipment and supplies, and no animals; a dissecting-room
with sufficient anatomical material, and clay for modeling bones ; a limited num-
ber of wet specimens, and a small number of books in a room that is locked, though
opened to students on request. There is no laboratory for physiology or pharma-
cology. The building is new, attractive, and fairly well kept.

Clinical facilities : A considerable part of one floor is used for a dispensary. The
rooms are poorly equipped and cared for; there is no clinical laboratory. The at-
tendance is very small, for the neighborhood is decidedly well-to-do.

The school adjoins a private hospital in which many of the teachers are inter-
ested. It is, however, of no teaching use. The catalogue describes it as "not a
charity hospital by any means. ... In fact it is a twentieth century classy hospi-
tal.'" For clinical instruction the students have access to the County Hospital, sev-
eral miles distant, where the school has the use of 100 beds, holding clinics for
senior students two days weekly. In surgery, students witness an operation with-
out taking part in it; in medicine, the students make brief histories, which are,
however, no part of the hospital records. Autopsies are done by the internes, who
have no connection with the medical school. Students are not admitted to the ob-
stetrical ward. Clinical facilities are thus extremely limited, for the management of
the hospital is in no essential respect controlled by educational considerations.

Date of visit: May, 1909.

(2) UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA : CLINICAL DEPARTMENT. Up to March, 1909, this
school offered a four-year course as the medical department of the University
of Southern California ; it has now become a second clinical department of the
University of California, and will therefore offer after June, 1910, only the third
and fourth years' work. See (6).

190 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Clinical facilities : Its present facilities for offering the instruction of the last two
years are, for a university department on a two-year college basis, distinctly
meager. It enjoys at the County Hospital the same facilities as the local College
of Physicians and Surgeons, i.e., access to 100 beds, two or three days weekly
being devoted to clinics for the senior class. Additional opportunities, depending
on the personal connections of members of the faculty, are usually of slight peda-
gogic value. The school has an excellent dispensary building, fairly equipped in
certain respects, but indifferently conducted, though the attendance is good. It
is also in close proximity to a good medical library. The clinical teachers are all
local practitioners. The state university will incur no expense on account of this
department for two years at least

Date ofvitit : May, 1909.

(3) CALIFORNIA MEDICAL COLLEGE. Eclectic. Organized at Oakland in 1879, this
school has led a roving and precarious existence in the meanwhile.

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 9, of whom 7 are from California.

Teaching staff": 27, of whom 26 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $1060 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The school occupies a few neglected rooms on the second floor
of a fifty-foot frame building. Its so-called equipment is dirty and disorderly be-
yond description. Its outfit in anatomy consists of a small box of bones and the
dried-up filthy fragments of a single cadaver. A few bottles of reagents constitute
the chemical laboratory. A cold and rusty incubator, a single microscope, and a
few unlabeled wet specimens, etc., form the so-called "equipment" for pathology
and bacteriology.

Clinical facilities : There is no dispensary and no access to the County Hospital.
The school is a disgrace to the state whose laws permit its existence.

Datt ofvitit: May, 1909.

(4) Los ANGELES COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHY. Emigrated from Iowa in 1905. A stock
company.

Entrance requirement: Less than an ordinary grammar school education, with con-
ditions. Many of the students are men and women of advanced years.

Attendance: Began two years ago with 60, now claims "more than 250."

Teaching staff: 19. All the teachers are practitioners.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, the annual income being about $37,500

CALIFORNIA 191

from tuitions and a considerable sum from "treatments" (see below). As the instruc-
tion provided is inexpensive, the stock must be a very profitable investment.

Laboratory facilities : The school occupies a five-story building containing a chemical
laboratory, with meager equipment and limited desk space, and a single labora-
tory for histology, pathology, and bacteriology. The dissecting-room contains
five tables, but sufficient material. The rest of the building is mainly devoted to
treatment rooms and the business office.

Clinical facilities: There is no free dispensary. Patients who are willing to undergo
treatment before a class pay not less than $3 a month; patients who are treated
in the presence of a single student pay $5. A hospital is now under construction.

The general aspect is that of a thriving business. An abundance of advertising mat-
ter, in which the profits of osteopathy are prominently set forth,1 is distributed.
Date of visit: May, 1909.

(5) PACIFIC COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHY. A stock company, established in 1896.

Entrance requirement: Ostensibly high school graduation; but "mature men and
women who have been in business are given a chance and usually make good."

Attendance: 85.

Teaching staff: 38, 19 being professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $12,750 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The school has an ordinary chemical laboratory, a fairly
equipped laboratory for pathology, histology, and bacteriology, with a private
laboratory for the instructor in these branches adjoining, the usual dissecting-
room, and a limited amount of apparatus for experimental work in physiology.

Clinical facilities : A dispensary is carried on at the school, which also owns a hospital
for obstetrical and surgical cases. The catalogue fails, however, to state that the
students have no regular work in this hospital. They rarely see medical cases;
"they don't have as much acute work as they should." Nevertheless, they are
drilled to "treat gonorrhea by diet and antiseptics; syphilis with ointments and
dietetics, and without mercury; typhoid, pneumonia, etc.," along the same lines.

Date of visit : May, 1909.

OAKLAND: Population, 73,812.

(6) COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY. Established 1902 as a stock company, stock
partly subscribed by merchants of the town.

1 " People are ready to pay for relief from distress and sickness. It is only fair to say that many of
our graduates are earning as much in single months as they were formerly able to earn by a full
years work." (Catalogue, p. 9.)

192 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Entrance requirement: "High school or equivalent.**

Attendance: 17.

Teaching staff: 82, 13 being professors. There are no full-time teachers.

Resources available for maintenance: The school lives on fees, amounting to $2760
(estimated), and on contributions from the faculty.

Laboratory facilities: It occupies a new, well kept building, has a small laboratory
for experimental physiology, small separate laboratories for bacteriology, histo-
logy, and pathology, a beautiful, though not extensive, collection of pathological
specimens, a laboratory for chemistry, a dissecting-room with provision for model-
ing, and a small library of slight value. Though there are no full-time teachers,
there is evidence of active interest in pathology. Post-mortems are abundant and are
intelligently used, through a fortunate connection of the instructor in pathology.

Clinical facilities : In respect to both dispensary and hospital, the clinical facilities

are decidedly inadequate.
Date ofvitit: May, 1909.

SAN FRANCISCO: Population, 355,919.

(7) UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. Established as such 1872. An
organic department of the university. The first and second years' work is given
at Berkeley. See (2).

Entrance requirement: Two years of college work, strictly enforced.
Attendance: 36, all but 2 from California,

Teaching staff: 60, of whom 12 are professors. The laboratory courses at Berkeley
are given by full-time teachers.

Resources available for maintenance: The department shares the university funds, its
budget calling for $33,396. The total receipts from fees are $7004.

Laboratory facilities: The equipment and instruction are of the highest quality. The
laboratories, though temporary in structure, are completely fitted up, in charge
of high-grade teachers, abundantly provided with assistants and helpers. The sole
question to be raised concerns the medical atmosphere, which, in several depart-
ments, is not strongly in evidence. In consequence, post-mortem work has not
been hitherto cultivated, though abundant opportunities for it exist. The bio-
logical point of view prevails. This is not the case with anatomy, the teaching
of which — thoroughly scientific in method and spirit — frankly meets the main
purpose of the students.

Clinical facilities : Clinical instruction is given in San Francisco. The university hos-
pital, its main reliance, is small but modern. It contains 75 beds, practically all

CALIFORNIA 198

available for instruction.1 Bedside teaching is carried on; but post-mortem work
for the benefit of the students is meager. Some additional clinical work is procured
at hospitals maintained by the city and by the United States government. In
general, the laboratory and clinical departments are not as yet effectively correlated.
The teachers of the third and fourth years are, excepting the dean, practitioners
who are not in touch with the laboratory work and ideals as realized at Berkeley.
Efforts are, however, making to bridge the gap.

The hospital is unfortunately situated from the standpoint of a dispensary; such
material as there is, is not well used from a teaching point of view. The students
do not in all departments take an active part in the dispensary work. For example,
in some of them they have nothing to do with making up the records, which are
separately kept in the several departments. No report, showing the number of the
distribution of cases, is obtainable.
Date of visit: May, 1909.

(8) LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, ON THE COOPER MEDI-
CAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION. Until 1908, the Cooper Medical College offered a four-
year course based on high school graduation. Its property has now been deeded
to Stanford University, its buildings being the seat of the clinical department of
Stanford University School of Medicine, the instruction of the last five semesters
being given in Cooper Hall and Lane Hospital. That of the first three semesters
is given at Palo Alto. As its present classes graduate, the Cooper Medical College
passes out of existence and its faculty disbands.

Entrance requirement : Three years of college work.

Attendance: 16 in first year (fourth collegiate year). No other year's work has yet
been given.

Teaching staff: 21, of whom 16 are professors. Six professors and one assistant pro-
fessor give their entire time to medical work. The clinical professors thus far
chosen have been taken from the former faculty of the Cooper Medical College.

Resources available for maintenance : The department will share in the general in-
come of the university. A special library endowment amounts to about $250,000.

Laboratory facilities : These are provided at Palo Alto on the same scale as other
departments there (anatomy, pharmacology, bacteriology, physiology, physio-
logical chemistry). The school has an unusually valuable library of some 85,000
volumes and receives the main current medical periodicals, American and foreign.

Clinical facilities: Clinical work on the part of Stanford University is not yet begun.
The university now owns the Lane Hospital of 125 beds, which has hitherto been
conducted as a pay institution. Patients paying $10 a week are used for clinical

1 During four months of 1909, there was a daily average of 44 free patients.

194 MEDICAL EDUCATION

teaching ; seventy -odd beds are thus available, part of these being temporarily
supported by the city.1 The hospital is now under temporary control of Cooper
Medical College until needed by the university. Its organization at present, from
the teaching point of view, is seriously defective. Records are meager ; no surgical
rounds are made in the wards ; obstetrical work exists only in the form of an out-
patient department; post-mortems are scarce. No hospital report is obtainable.
The catalogue statement that the hospital is a teaching hospital is hardly sus-
tained by the facts.

The dispensary in the college building adjoining had in 1907 an attendance of
20,000, including both old and new cases. But the material, though adequate in
amount, was not thoroughly used by the Cooper Medical College.
Date ofvirit: May, 1909.

(9) COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. Established 1896. An independent school.
Entrance requirement: "High school education or equivalent."

Attendance: 70.

Teaching staff": 53, 23 being professors. There are no full-time teachers.

Resources available for maintenance: The institution has no resources but fees,
amounting to $7715 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The school has no laboratories worthy the name.
Clinical facilities: There are no adequate clinical or dispensary facilities.
Date ofvitit: May, 1909.

(10) HAHNEMANN MEDICAL COLLEGE OF THE PACIFIC. Established 1881. Homeopathic.
An independent school.

Entrance requirement: "High school graduation or equivalent."

Attendance: 23.

Teaching staff": 35, 13 being professors, none of them full-time teachers.

Resources available for maintenance: The institution has practically no resources
but fees, amounting to $2685 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The school occupies a small, well kept building containing the
usual dissecting-room, a laboratory for elementary chemistry, one fairly equipped
laboratory in common for histology, bacteriology, and pathology, and a small
orderly library.

Clinical facilities : Several neatly kept but inadequately equipped rooms are set aside
for a dispensary ; the attendance is fair, the records meager. The main clinical reli-

1 During four months of 1909, there was a daily average of 60.

CALIFORNIA 195

ance now is on a small number of beds paid for by the city in the Hahnemann
Hospital, a modern institution close by.1
Date of visit: May, 1909.

General Cormderations

CONSIDERATION of medical education in California may well start from the fact that,
without taking into account the osteopaths — who abound — the state has now one
physician to every 401 inhabitants, that is, in round numbers, about four times as
many doctors as it needs or can properly support. Such an enormous disproportion
can hardly be rectified within less than a generation ; it makes radical measures in the
interest of sound medical education not only immediately feasible, but urgently
necessary.

Legal enactment fixing a sound basis for future practitioners, of whatever school,
the grant of authority to the state board to close schools flagrantly defective in
either laboratory or clinical facilities, or the institution of practical examinations
for license, — any one of these measures would at once wipe out at least seven of the
ten existing schools, with distinct advantage to the public health of the state. As
none of these schools has the resources indispensable to meet the rising tide in
medical education, this outcome is in any case inevitable; legal regulation of the
type indicated would merely hasten the day.

Even then the situation of medical education in the state is not altogether clear.
The University of California has not yet solved its problem. The sums it now devotes
to medical education are relatively small; its clinical facilities in San Francisco are
inadequate; it has not effectively organized what it there offers; it has not brought
about team work between the two severed branches that constitute the department.
If now it has proved difficult to perfect an organization covering two places separated
by San Francisco Bay, what reason is there to be confident when the distance involved
is five hundred miles ? Nor does any practical need compel a step educationally ques-
tionable. The attendance in Los Angeles in the last two years on a high school or
equivalent basis is less than thirty ; it will fall still lower when the two-year college
basis is enforced and transplantation from Berkeley to Los Angeles is required at
the beginning of the third year. Moreover, the clinical prospects are by no means
up to university standard. The dispensary may indeed be adequately developed, but
one hundred beds in the general medical and surgical wards of an old-fashioned
public hospital, however supplemented by courtesies elsewhere, constitute a fragile
support for a university department of medicine. The difficulty of controlling the
teaching at Los Angeles by the scientific ideals of the university at Berkeley can
hardly be overstated. Finally, with the present needs of the clinical department at
San Francisco, it is not likely that the university can divert to Los Angeles the sums
necessary to create a satisfactory department there. The move is explained on the

1 During four months of 1909 there was a daily average of 55 city patients.

196 MEDICAL EDUCATION

ground that peculiar conditions exist in the state; it is, however, not clear why a
long narrow state is educationally in any different plight from a short broad one;
in either case, needless multiplication of medical schools is economically wasteful and
professionally demoralizing.

The university has undertaken to dominate two detached clinical departments,
manned by local practitioners. There is nothing in the present status of detached
clinical departments of this type to encourage confidence in the outcome. Before too
far committing itself to this policy, it is at least worth inquiring into the advis-
ability of concentrating its medical instruction across the bay, where a population of
over two hundred thousand affords sufficient clinical material, and where a compact,
effective, and organically whole university department of medicine, with a faculty,
laboratory and clinical, selected on educational principles, could be readily developed.

These considerations apply in some respects with equal force to the action of
Stanford University in taking over the Cooper Medical College at San Francisco.
It was well enough to offer the laboratory sciences at Palo Alto, where the resources
and ideals of the university insure high-grade instruction ; but the entrance of the
university into the San Francisco field in all probability portends the division and re-
striction of whatever opportunities the city may hereafter create. Lane Hospital can
be developed into a teaching hospital of adequate size only if very large sums are
available for the purpose; its organization and conduct have been in the past peda-
gogically very defective; and the clinical professors so far appointed have been taken
with one exception from the former Cooper faculty. With one university medical
school already on the ground, a second — and a divided school at that — is therefore
a decidedly questionable undertaking. There is no need of it from the standpoint
of the public ; it must, if adequately developed, become a serious burden upon the
finances of Stanford University. If the experience of other schools and cities is to be
heeded, the question arises whether Stanford would not do well to content itself with
the work of the first two years at Palo Alto, and to cooperate with the state uni-
versity in all that pertains to the clinical end.

The situation just presented deserves to be studied carefully by all interested in
medical education. What has happened in California is likely to happen elsewhere.
Scores of schools are beginning a desperate struggle for existence. Their first impulse
is to throw themselves into the lap of some prosperous university. The universities,
not as yet themselves realizing that medical education is no longer either profitable
or self-supporting, are prone to complete themselves by accepting a medical depart-
ment as an apparent gift. From the standpoint of the university this blunder will
soon prove a serious drain, as increased expenditure on instruction and reduced in-
come from fees reveal the actual state of affairs. From the standpoint of medical edu-
cation and practice, the tendency in question is still more deplorable. The curse of
medical education is the excessive number of schools. The situation can improve
only as weaker and superfluous schools are extinguished.

COLORADO 197

COLORADO

Population, 653,506. Number of physicians, 1690. Ratio, 1: 328.
Number of medical schools, 2.

DENVER: Population, 158,329.

(1) DENVER AND GROSS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. Organized by consolidation 1902. No-
minally the medical department of the University of Denver, with which institu-
tion it has, however, only a six months' contract; to all intents and purposes, a
proprietary school, managed by its own faculty.

Entrance requirement; Less than high school graduation, loosely enforced.
Attendance: 109, over one-half from Colorado.

Teaching staff: 44 professors and 35 of other grade, none of them giving their
whole time to teaching.

Resources available for maintenance: The school has no resources but fees, amounting
to $12,624 per annum (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : Its equipment consists of a chemical laboratory of the ordinary
medical school type, a dissecting-room, containing a few subjects as dry as leather,
a physiological laboratory with slight equipment, and the usual pathology and
bacteriology laboratories. There is atotal absence of scientific activity. The rooms are
poorly kept. A few cases of books are found in the college office behind the counter.

Clinical facilities: The college owns a new and exceedingly attractive dispensary
building. Separate rooms nicely equipped are occupied by the various specialties.
The attendance averages 90 a day; the records are inadequate. There is an out-
patient obstetrical service.

For hospital facilities the school depends largely on the County Hospital, the
management of which is political. Clinics are held daily from 8.30 to 10, "purely
through courtesy." Students from all schools merely "look on ;" they are "not much
at the bedside." Obstetrical work is limited, post-mortems rare. Hospital staff ap-
pointments are secured through "pull;" the college must take into the faculty
the men who are already on the hospital staff. Supplementary opportunities are fur-
nished by several local institutions. In several of these, however, the clinics are not re-
gularly scheduled: "announcements appear upon the bulletin board of the college."

Date of visit: April, 1909.

BOULDER: Population, 9,652.

(2) UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. Organized 1883. An integral part
of the university.

198 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school education or its equivalent. Creden-
tials are passed on by the dean.

Attendance: 85.

Teaching staff": 45, of whom 25 are professors, 20 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: The school is supported out of the total uni-
versity income of $200,000 per annum. Its fee income is $4043; its budget, $28,000.

Laboratory facilities: The school is in general satisfactorily equipped to do under-
graduate teaching in the medical sciences. Full-time men are in charge of patho-
logy, bacteriology, and physiology, though the departments lack trained assistants.
Histology and embryology are taught in the department of biology. The chair of
anatomy is occupied by a non-resident surgeon. There is a good library, with a
subscription list including the best German and English journals. A regular fund
is available for the purchase of books and apparatus.

Clinical facilities : The university hospital is entirely inadequate, even though the
school is small. It contains 35 beds and averages 16 patients available for teaching.
Its management has only recently been modernized. It now contains a clinical
laboratory where students work, keeping excellent records of their findings. There
are from 12 to 15 obstetrical cases annually in the hospital; these are supple-
mented by an out-patient service.
The dispensary is slight.

Date ofvirit: April, 1909.

General Considerations

THE state is overcrowded with doctors. It can therefore safely go to a higher stand-
ard; indeed, the new law provides that after 1912, all applicants for license must
have had, previous to their medical education, a year of college work. As this is a
practice, and not an educational, requirement, the Denver school may still continue
to train low-grade men for adjacent states;1 but it is probable that if it continues
on a standard below the legal practice minimum, it will be too discredited, and if it
arises to the aforesaid minimum, too much reduced, to continue. The state univer-
sity alone, so far as we can now see, can hope to obtain the financial backing neces-
sary to teach medicine in the proper way regardless of income from fees, and to it
a monopoly should quickly fall. Its laboratory facilities are steadily increasing, but
adequate clinical resources are not at present assured. It is important, therefore, that
as a first step the state university gain access to the clinical facilities at Denver,
from which it is now cut off, first, by a constitutional provision forbidding the state
university to teach except at Boulder, second, by the fact that the City Hospital is

1 It is. however, equally in the interest of these states that a further low-grade supply should be cut
off. Though none of the following states has a medical school, all have too many doctors. The ratios
are: Wyoming, 1 : 541 ; Arizona, 1 : 627 ; Idaho, 1 : 663; New Mexico, 1 : 618.

CONNECTICUT 199

in the hands of the local school. These conditions, so common in American cities, are
plainly against the general interest of the community. It may be that an arrangement
can be made by which the Denver and Gross school will be handed over to the uni-
versity, thus clearing the field of all obstacles to the upbuilding of a creditable school ;
for as Boulder is practically a suburb of Denver, the difficulties in the way of effective
management at Denver are not insuperable. Whether the entire medical school shall
be permanently concentrated at Denver or, following the Ann Arbor plan, a liberally
supported hospital at Boulder be relied on to overcome the disadvantage of location
in the matter of clinical material, need not be decided just now. The important steps
to take at this moment comprise (1) passage of the constitutional amendment open-
ing the clinical facilities of Denver to the state university, (2) more liberal state ap-
propriations for the medical school, and (3) the consolidation of the Denver and
Boulder schools as the medical department of the state university.1

CONNECTICUT

Population, 1,054,366. Number of physicians, 1424. Ratio, 1 : 740.
Number of medical schools, 1.

NEW HAVEN -.Population, 130,027.

YALE MEDICAL SCHOOL. Organized 1813. An organic part of Yale University.

Entrance requirement: Two years of college work, enforced with such unusual con-
scientiousness that in passing from the high school to the college standard this
year, deficient members of last year's class were refused re-admission. Moreover,
the advanced requirement has been actually exacted; out of an entering class of
23, one only is conditioned, — in part of biology. This is probably the lowest per-
centage of "conditions" that the country affords.

Attendance: 138; 72 per cent from Connecticut.

Teaching- staff': 64, 14 being professors. Of these, the teachers in the fundamental
branches devote full time to instruction, though they are overworked and without
a proper force of assistants; in the clinical branches, the professor of medicine
with two assistants is salaried. Small sums are also paid to a few other teachers in
the clinical years.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees amounting to $15,325, income from en-
dowment amounting to $10,000, university appropriation of $17,986, making
annual budget $43,311.

Laboratory facilities: Well equipped student laboratories for organic chemistry,

1 As this Report goes to press, announcement is made that a consolidation of the Denver and Gross
School with the medical department of the state university has been arranged.

200 MEDICAL EDUCATION

physiology, and pharmacology; the provision for bacteriology, pathology, and
anatomy is less satisfactory. In physiology alone is there internal evidence of pro-
gressive activity. The instructors in other branches are overworked, being called
on to carry the routine work of extensive subjects in all their parts without ade-
quate assistance. Under such circumstances, the work, however conscientious, is
bound to be limited.

Clinical facilities : The New Haven Hospital, in which the school controls a small
number of beds, is very intelligently employed. The obstetrical and gynecological
wards, however, are not used for teaching; nor is there a contagious disease pa-
vilion. Post-mortems are scarce. Clinical laboratories and teaching-rooms have
been improvised close by the hospital; students are thereby enabled to do the
clinical laboratory work in connection with assigned cases. Provision is also made
there for the independent work of the professors of medicine and surgery.

The dispensary occupies a new and excellent building, but lacks systematic
organization as a teaching adjunct. The attendance is adequate; but as the staff
service is gratis, it varies greatly in quality in various departments.

Date of visit : January, 1910.

General Considerations

As the school now stands, it would, in point of facilities, still have to be classed with
the better type of those on the high school basis; for, though it has advanced to a
two-year college basis, there has been as yet no corresponding improvement of facili-
ties. In order to deserve the higher grade student body which it invites, a more liberal
policy ought to be pursued. The laboratory branches ought to be better manned, so
that the instructors may create within them a more active spirit. A university depart-
ment of medicine cannot largely confine itself to routine instruction, — certainly
not after requiring two years of college work for admission to its opportunities.
For the same reason the clinical facilities should be extended, probably through a
more intimate connection with the present hospital. Its wards should be more gener-
ally used; more beds should be made accessible within them; and the missing pavilion
for contagious diseases be provided. Enough money ought to be spent on the dispen-
sary to ensure in every department systematic and thorough discipline, in examining
patients, keeping records, etc.

To make these improvements, larger permanent endowment is required. As the
school is one of a very few in New England so circumstanced as to have a clear duty
and opportunity, it behooves the university to make a vigorous campaign in behalf
of its medical department.

[For gtneral ditcutrion t«4 " New England" p. 261.]

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 201

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Population, 322,212. Number of physicians, 1231. Ratio, 1 : 262.
Number of medical schools 3, plus two postgraduate (Army and Navy Medical)
schools.

WASHINGTON: Population, 327,044.

(1) GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT. OF MEDICINE. Organized 1825.
Now an integral department of the university.

Entrance requirement: Less than a four-year high school course.
Attendance: 117.

Teaching staff: 69 instructors, 25 being professors, none of whom is a full-time teacher;
three instructors of other grade devote entire time to the school.

Resources available for maintenance: The school budget calls for $23,779; its income
in fees is $21,833; the hospital is self-supporting.

Laboratory facilities: The laboratories of physiology, pathology, chemistry, and
anatomy are well equipped ; the building is admirably kept, and there is evidence
of independent activity on the part of the several instructors. Animals are pro-
vided; there is a fair library enjoying a small annual appropriation, and a small
but attractive museum. Post-mortems are scarce.

Clinical facilities: The University Hospital and Dispensary, under complete control,
adjoins the medical school; 56 beds are available for teaching purposes. The staff
has been recently reorganized on modern lines in order to increase the scope of
bedside work. Supplementary opportunities are furnished under the usual condi-
tions by several other hospitals.

The dispensary has an annual attendance of something over 1000.

Date of visit: March, 1909.

(2) GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. Organized 1851. A university
department in name only.

Entrance requirement: Less than a four-year high school course.
Attendance: 89.

Teaching staff : 74, of whom 20 are professors; no one gives whole time to the medi-
cal school, except the dean, who has the chair of hygiene and is treasurer of both
medical and dental schools.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees only, amounting to $11,000 a year.
Laboratory facilities : The equipment consists of a good dissecting-room, a single

202 MEDICAL EDUCATION

fairly well stocked laboratory for pathology, bacteriology, and histology, a fair
equipment for experimental physiology, and an ordinary chemical laboratory.
There is no library accessible to students, no museum, and no pharmacological
laboratory.

Clinical facilities: The school has recently built a hospital, in which there are 100
ward beds, not free, but available for clinical use. It is several miles distant. The
usual supplementary clinics are held in other places also. A few rooms at the hos-
pital are set aside for a dispensary; the attendance is small.

Datt ofvirit: March, 1909.

(3) HOWARD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1869. An integral part of
Howard University.

Entrance requirement: A high school course or its equivalent.

Attendance: 205, most of whom are working their way through. Practically all the
students are colored.

Teaching staff: 52, 22 being professors, 30 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: The school budget calls for $40,000, of which
§26,000 are supplied by student fees, most of the remainder by government appro-
priation. Though the school has been changed from a night to a day school, the
fees raised from $80 to $100, and the admission requirements stiffened, the at-
tendance has nevertheless increased.

Laboratory facilities : The laboratory equipment includes anatomy, pathology, his-
tology, bacteriology, and chemistry. There is no organized museum, though the
school possesses a number of specimens, normal and pathological, charts, models, etc.

Clinical facilities : Clinical facilities are provided in the new, thoroughly modern, and
adequate government hospital of 278 free beds, with its dispensary, closely identi-
fied with the medical school. A pavilion for contagious diseases alone is lacking.

Datt of visit: January, 1910.

(4) ARMY MEDICAL SCHOOL. Organized 1822. Offers laboratory courses, covering
eight months, to candidates who have passed their preliminary examinations as
army surgeons.

Attendance: 57.

Teaching staff: 10 instructors, detached from the army for the purpose.

Laboratory facilities : Excellent teaching and working laboratories in cramped quar-
ters are provided in the building occupied by the great library and museum of the
Surgeon -General's office.

DaU of vitit : January, 1910.

GEORGIA 203

(5) NAVY MEDICAL SCHOOL. Offers laboratory courses, covering six months, to candi-
dates who have passed preliminary examinations as navy surgeons.

Attendance: 20.

Teaching staff": Several instructors, detached from the service for three years or less.

Laboratory facilities: Good teaching and working laboratories are provided in the

building formerly used for the naval observatory.
Date of visit : January, 1910.

General Considerations

OF the medical schools in Washington, Howard University has a distinct mission
— that of training the negro physician — and an assured future. The government
has to some extent been the patron of the institution, and has done its medical de-
partment an incalculably great service by the erection of the Freedman's Hospital.
Sound policy — educational as well as philanthropic — recommends that this hospital
be made a more intimate part of Howard University, so that students may profit
to the uttermost by its clinical opportunities. Its usefulness as a hospital in its im-
mediate vicinity will be thereby increased; and its service to the colored race at large
will be augmented to the extent to which it is used to educate their future physicians.
The other two schools lack adequate resources as well as assured prospects. They
are surrounded by medical schools — those of Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia —
whose competition they cannot meet. Finally, the District of Columbia has relatively
more physicians than any other part of the country. Should the District require, as
it ought, a higher basis, or even enforce an actual four-year high school standard,
both would suffer seriously. Neither school is now equal to the task of training phy-
sicians of modern type.

GEORGIA

Population, 2,557,412. Number of physicians, 2887. Ratio, 1 : 886.
Number of medical schools, 5.

ATLANTA: Population, 118,243.

(1) ATLANTA COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. Organized through merger, 1898.
An independent school.

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 286, about 63 per cent from Georgia.

Teaching staff: 51, of whom 20 are professors. None of the teachers devotes full time
to the school.

204 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Resources available for maintenance: The school has practically no resources but fees,
amounting to $28,000.

Laboratory facilities : It is perhaps the best equipped of all the schools of its grade;
it has good buildings, containing a good dissecting-room, — dissecting material,
however, somewhat scarce, — a fairly equipped laboratory for physiology and physio-
logical chemistry, one of the same character for histology and pathology, and
a separate laboratory, well equipped, for bacteriology. Unfortunately, the school
has no full-time instructors in these branches, so that, what with practitioner
teachers and an inferior student body, the equipment cannot be used at its real
value. There is a small library, but no museum.

Clinical facilities: Hospital facilities are furnished by the Grady (free city) Hospital,
close by. Except in obstetrics, to which department students are not admitted,
the clinical material is fairly abundant; but it cannot be effectively used,1 and the
students are so unappreciative of their opportunities that attendance in the
wards is very irregular.

In the school building a large suite of rooms is set aside for a dispensary. The
attendance is ample, the methods old-fashioned.

Date of visit : January, 1909.

(2) ATLANTA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. Organized 1905. An independent school.
Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 230; not quite 70 per cent from Georgia.

Teaching staff: 44, of whom 17 are professors, no one devoting whole time to the
school.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees and gifts, amounting together to $20,000-
$25,000 annually.

Laboratory facilities : Its laboratory equipment is slight, though it possesses some
features uncommon in schools of its type, — an excellent projectoscope, an X-ray
machine, and a small, useful library. There is no museum.

Clinical facilities: A suite of rooms in fair condition only is provided for a dispensary.
Likewise, in the basement of the college, two wards, containing 20 beds, have been
arranged ; so far as they go, they are fairly well used. For the rest of its clinical
instruction the school depends mainly on the Grady Hospital, so far off, however,
that the students do not conscientiously attend.

Datt of visit: January, 1909.

(3) GEORGIA COLLEGE OF ECLECTIC MEDICINE AND SURGERY. Organized 1877. An in-
dependent institution.

1 The consent of ward patients must be obtained before bedside instruction can be given.

GEORGIA 205

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 66.

Teaching staff: 20, of whom 14 are professors and 6 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $5655 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The school occupies a building which, in respect to filthy con-
ditions, has few equals, but no superiors, among medical schools. Its anatomy room,
containing a single cadaver, is indescribably foul; its chemical "laboratory" is
composed of old tables and a few bottles, without water, drain, lockers, or reagents;
the pathological and histological "laboratory" contains a few dirty slides and
three ordinary microscopes.

Clinical facilities : The school is practically without clinical facilities. Its outfit in
obstetrics is limited to a tattered manikin.

Nothing more disgraceful calling itself a medical school can be found anywhere.
Date of visit: February, 1909.

(4) HOSPITAL MEDICAL COLLEGE. Eclectic. Organized 1908. This institution occupies
the rear of a private infirmary. Started in 1908 "on four weeks' notice11 by seceders
from the Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery (see (3) above\'\i gradu-
ated 17 doctors at the close of its first year.

Entrance requirement : Nominal.

Attendance: 43.

Teaching- staff: 16, all of whom are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $3950 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : In the matter of equipment, it is impossible to say what be-
longs to the school and what to the infirmary. At any rate, there is only one lab-
oratory with any equipment worthy the name, — that of pathology and bacteriology.

Clinical facilities: The clinical facilities comprise the infirmary above mentioned, con-
taining 16 beds. It is, of course, a pay infirmary.
Date of visit: February, 1909.

AUGUSTA: Population, 45,582.

(5) MEDICAL COLLEGE OF GEORGIA. Organized in 1828, it has been since 1873 nomi-
nally the medical department of the state university ; but it is entirely controlled
by its own separate board, and "no liability for its debts or expenses shall be in-
curred by the university."1 The institution is therefore in effect a proprietary school.

1 Agreement between Medical College of Georgia and University of Georgia, article 4.

206 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 99, mostly from Georgia. Twenty-six of these hold free county scholar-
ships, in addition to which number the dean admits as many more as he pleases,
generally at the request of congressmen. Eighteen students were admitted free in
this way last year. Hence 44 of the 99 students are free.

Teaching staff*: 33, of whom 18 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: The institution has no resources but fees,
amounting to $6835.

Laboratory facilities : The school occupies a building which contains an exceedingly
foul dissecting-room, a meager equipment for elementary chemistry, a fair equip-
ment for histology and pathology, and practically nothing for bacteriology. There
is a small museum and a collection of several thousand books of mainly anti-
quarian interest.

Clinical facilities: The city hospital adjoining, containing 100 beds, — less than half
of them occupied at the time of the inspection, — offers most of the clinical facili-
ties; the Lamar Hospital is also available, but is more than a mile off, though
described in the official catalogue of the state university as "located only a short
distance from the college." At the city hospital the students get no obstetrical
work because "the cases mostly come at night and you can't get the students;" at
the Lamar Hospital they get none because " they are too busy." There is no evi-
dence anywhere of clinical laboratory work. It was learned that at the city hospital
there had been "two post-mortems in six years."

There is a dispensary at the city hospital, but no records are kept.

Datt of visit: February, 1909.

General Considerations

THE situation to be dealt with in this state is so simple that there is no room for
difference of opinion as to what ought to be done. That every state in the south is
overcrowded with doctors is generally admitted. Florida alone of surrounding states
lacks a medical school, and there is an excess of doctors there (ratio 1 : 865). The
two eclectic schools, as utterly incapable of training doctors, should be summarily
suppressed. The Augusta situation is hopeless. There is no possibility of developing
there a medical school controlled by the university. The site is unpropitious, the dis-
tance too great. The university ought not much longer permit its name to be exploited
by a low-grade institution, whose entrance terms — if the phrase can be used — are
far below that of its academic department. It should snap the slender thread; the
medical school will not long survive amputation.

Two schools remain at Atlanta, a growing city in close proximity to the univer-
sity at Athens. It would be easy to consolidate these two institutions to form the

ILLINOIS 207

medical department of the University of Georgia. The department could immediately
adopt the general entrance requirements of the university, to be enforced by the
university authorities. The faculty should, of course, be reconstructed and governed
without restriction on university lines. The city's growth ensures a fair clinic and
probably material aid.

ILLINOIS

Population, 5,717,229. Number of physicians, 9744. Ratio 1 : 586.
Number of medical schools, 14, plus 4 postgraduate schools.

CHICAGO: Population, 2,282,927.

(1) RUSH MEDICAL COLLEGE. A divided school. Since 1900 the instruction of the
first and second years has been given wholly at the University of Chicago, of
which it is an integral part; the third and fourth years, given at the Cook County,
the Presbyterian, and the Children's Memorial Hospitals and in the laboratory
buildings adjoining them, are merely affiliated with the university. Pedagogically,
the two branches do not form an organic whole.

Entrance requirement: Two years of college work, strictly enforced, though a consid-
erable part of the entering class is conditioned in part of the scientific require-
ment.

Attendance: 488.

Teaching staff: 89 professors and 141 of other grade: total 230. The laboratory
work is in charge of men devoting their entire time to teaching and research.

Resources available for maintenance: The instruction provided by the university is
paid for out of the university funds and costs annually $45,738; the clinical divi-
sion, carried by student fees and by contributions, costs $36,714: a total cost of
$82,452. The total income in fees is $60,485.

Laboratory facilities : The laboratory branches are most liberally provided for on
the university grounds; the laboratories are complete in number and equipment,
each manned by a full staff, all the members of which are engaged in investiga-
tion as well as in teaching. There is considerable difference of opinion among
those engaged in teaching the scientific subjects as to how far the presentation
should be deliberately medical in aim.

Clinical facilities: Clinical facilities are provided by the Presbyterian Hospital, the
staff of which is the faculty of the Rush Medical School, by the Cook County
Hospital, and by other connections. The Presbyterian Hospital is an important
adjunct, though thus far it is not by any means a genuine teaching hospital. It
contains about 150 beds available for instruction. The Cook County Hospital will

208 MEDICAL EDUCATION

be discussed in connection with the general state situation. It is sufficient to say
here that its abundant material is in a high degree valuable, though serious limi-
tations upon its use exist. Rush holds 21 staff appointments.
Dispensary facilities are entirely adequate.

Datt of visit: April, 1909.

(2) NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. Organized 1859, it has borne
its present title since 1891. An integral part of the university.

Entrance requirement: One year of college work, hitherto loosely enforced.
Attendance: 522.

Teaching staff: 54 professors and 89 of other grade: 143 in all, ten of whom devote
their entire time to the school.

Resources available for maintenance: Except for two professorships, endowed to the
extent of $60,700, the department lives on and pays for plant addition out of its fees
now amounting to $89,076.

Laboratory facilities : The school has the necessary laboratories, well equipped for
routine work ; more could be done but that the full-time teachers lack the neces-
sary assistants.

Clinical facilities: These are provided by Mercy Hospital, Wesley Hospital, the Cook
County Hospital, and other institutions. The Wesley Hospital, the staff of which
comes wholly from the faculty of this school,1 contains 80 free beds. It is, however,
not primarily a teaching hospital, though it might apparently be reorganized as
such with much advantage both to itself and to the medical school. The Cook
County Hospital will be discussed below; Northwestern holds 12 staff appoint-
ments there. In general, material is abundant in amount and variety; the defects
of the situation arise from the lack of financial resources and pedagogical control.
Dispensary requirements are amply met.

Data ofvititt: April, 1909; December, 1909.

(8) COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. Organized in 1882; since 1896 nominally
the medical department of the University of Illinois, with which, however, only a
contractual relation exists.

Entrance requirement : A high school education or its equivalent, the latter hitherto
very loosely interpreted, though somewhat stricter action has been enforced this
year. The policy of the institution had been to accept students who satisfied the
Illinois law as administered by the present state board ; the requirement has, there-
fore, been more or less nominal. Advanced standing has been accorded to stu-
dents from decidedly inferior schools, some of them among the worst institutions

1 Students from the American Medical Missionary College attend certain clinics.

ILLINOIS 209

in the country. These students were examined, only those who passed being ac-
cepted; but the fact that, with the teaching they have had, they can pass is con-
clusive as to the nature of the examination.

Attendance: 517, about 60 per cent from Illinois.

Teaching staff: 198, of whom 42 are professors, 156 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance : The institution is practically dependent on its
fees, amounting to $80,155 (estimated), and has a large floating debt.

Laboratory facilities : The school has the following laboratories: physiology, well
equipped; pharmacology and chemistry, mediocre; anatomy, pathology, and bac-
teriology, adequate. There are full-time professors of anatomy and physiology,
without skilled assistants or helpers. Their work is limited to routine. The school
has a large library.

Clinkal facilities: For these the school relies on the Cook County Hospital, on the
staff of which it holds 11 appointments, and on a number of other institutions to
which its students are admitted under the usual limitations. Prominent among
these is the so-called "University Hospital," which may be cited as a typical in-
stance of the misleading character of catalogue representations. The title itself is
a misnomer; for the hospital is a university hospital not in the sense that large
teaching advantages exist for the benefit of the university, but only in the sense
that to the existing opportunities, restricted as they are, students from other schools
are not admitted at all. The catalogue states that "it contains one hundred beds,
and its clinical advantages are used exclusively for the students of this college."
Not, however, the "clinical advantages" of the "one hundred beds," for 52 of them
are private. Its "clinical advantages" shrink on investigation to three weekly am-
phitheater clinics of slight pedagogic value and four ward clinics in obstetrics,
— each of the latter attended by some 12 or 14 students in a ward containing 13
beds. Supplementary connections give access to large surgical clinics.
The dispensary service is in general adequate.

Dates of visits: April, 1909; December, 1909.

(4) CHICAGO COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY. Organized 1901, and since 1902
the medical department of Valparaiso (Indiana) University ; up to 1905 an eclectic
institution.

Entrance requirement : A high school education or its equivalent, interpreted to in-
clude anything that the state board will accept.

Attendance :The school had an enrolment of 315 in 1907-8, and of 366 in 1908-9,
the senior class of the former year numbering 95, the freshman 69. This dispro-
portion is largely due to the fact that advanced standing has been indiscriminately
granted to students who had previously attended low-grade institutions, some of

210 MEDICAL EDUCATION

them now defunct. Credit has been allowed to former students of even the worst
of the Chicago night schools.

Teaching staff: The school has a faculty of 71, of whom 87 are professors. There are
no full-time teachers, though some of the scientific branches are taught by full-
time teachers of Valparaiso University, who come to the Chicago department on
certain days weekly.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees, amounting to $43,430 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The equipment throughout is ordinary, the usual laboratories
being provided. There are few teaching accessories.

Clinical facilities : Clinical facilities are inadequate, being limited in the main to an
adjoining hospital of 75 beds, of which one-fourth can be used for teaching, and
to the Cook County Hospital, on the staff of which the school has two represen-
tatives.

The dispensary has a fair attendance and is in some respects well organized.

DaU ofviiit: April, 1909.

(5) BENNETT MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1868, and up to 1909 an eclectic school.
A stock company, practically owned by the dean of the school : " there are enough
others to legalize the thing."

Entrance requirement : Nominal compliance with the Illinois law on the subject. A
pre-medical department, — Jefferson Park Academy, — recruited by solicitors, has
been organized by way of feeding the medical school. A vigorous advertising and
soliciting system is operated.

Attendance : 181 ; about one-half from Illinois.
Teaching- staff': 42, of whom 21 are professors.
Resources available for maintenance : Fees, amounting to $19,380 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The school building is in wretched condition. One badly kept
room is devoted to anatomy ; it contained a few cadavers as dry as leather; another,
in similar condition, is given to chemistry. There is slight provision for pathology
and bacteriology; equipment for physiology is sufficient only for simple demon-
strations. There are no teaching accessories worthy of mention.

Clinical faculties : These comprise a pay hospital of 45 beds, in which it is claimed
that 20 are made available for teaching use by means of free medical (not hospi-
tal) services ; and two places on the Cook County Hospital staff. The clinical facili-
ties are utterly inadequate.
There is a small dispensary.

ILLINOIS 211

The institution is frankly commercial. Its change of name (dropping "eclectic") is
a business move.

Date of visit: April, 1909.

(6) AMERICAN MEDICAL MISSIONARY COLLEGE. Organized 1895. This school gives the
bulk of its instruction at Battle Creek, Michigan, which see for complete account.

(7) JENNER MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1892. A night school, occupying three
upper floors of a business house. An independent institution.

Entrance requirement: Nominal compliance with state law. A one-year pre-medical
class is operated by way of satisfying the law.

Attendance: 112.

Teaching staff: 37, of whom 28 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $12,880 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The equipment consists of a meager outfit for chemistry, a
somewhat better equipment for physiology, though no animals were to be seen,
and a slight outfit for pathology and bacteriology. Anatomy is taught by lectures
"with the cadaver" from the beginning of the year until May 15, after which
there is "dissecting until the close of the year."

Clinical facilities : Clinical facilities are practically nil, — one or two night clinics
being all that the school claims to offer. The school once had access to Grace
Hospital, a private institution of 30 beds; but it has recently been turned out for
failure to pay for the privilege.

The dispensary attendance varies from two to ten, four nights weekly. No par-
ticular rooms for dispensary purposes are provided: "patients are taken right into
the rooms where the classes are."

An out-and-out commercial enterprise. The instruction is plainly a quiz-compend
drill aimed at the written examinations set by the state board of Illinois and of
other states. The possibility of teaching medicine acceptably in a night school is
discussed below (p. 216, note).
Date of visit: April, 1909.

(8) ILLINOIS MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1894. )

(9) RELIANCE MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1907.J

These two schools are bracketed because they are only different aspects of one en-
terprise worked in two shifts, one body of students attending by day, the other by
night. The plant is thus in "continuous performance." It is owned by its president,
who is in the main assisted in the scientific branches by recent college graduates,
to whom small sums are paid ; in the clinical branches by young physicians who

212 MEDICAL EDUCATION

tender their services gratis in order to "work up their business." The day school is
affiliated with Loyola University.

Entrance requirement: Of the kind usual in Illinois commercial medical schools. A
pre-medical class, running three hours each night, covers in one year the work of
two high school years. A boy who is engaged all day in trade can thus "finish"
two years' English, Latin, and mathematics at night in a single session. It is prob-
able that the pre-medical course will be lengthened to two such years, "equiva-
lent" to an entire high school course according to the "Illinois idea."

Attendance: Reliance Medical College, 83; Illinois Medical College, 69.

Teaching staff: The night medical school (Reliance) has a faculty of 44, 23 being pro-
fessors ; the day branch (Illinois Medical) has a faculty of 73, 38 being professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $9945 (Reliance, estimated);
$9175 (Illinois, estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The equipment conforms to legal stipulations: there is a library,
the beginnings of a museum, an ordinary dissecting-room, a small amount of ap-
paratus for physiology, and fair laboratories, as things go, for chemistry, histology,
pathology, and bacteriology. The laboratories are in good condition and are really
used.

Clinical facilities. Day students: Some eight or ten hours weekly for junior and senior
classes in scattered hospitals; work almost wholly surgical; one to two hours daily
in the dispensary in the college building. Students see no contagious diseases;
obstetrical work is all out-patient. Night students: About six hours weekly at the
Cook County Hospital between 6.30 and 9.30 p.m., opportunities being limited
to looking on at surgical work; dispensary, nightly. The night students see no
children's diseases, no acute medical diseases at the bedside, no contagious diseases.

Datet of visit*. • April, 1909; December, 1909.

(10) NATIONAL MEDICAL UNIVERSITY. A night school, organized in 1891 as "homeo-
pathic," which word was subsequently dropped. Ostensibly the medical depart-
ment of the "Chicago Night University," which claims departments of arts, law,
dentistry, pharmacy, etc. The school appears to be owned by the "dean."

Entrance requirement: Entrance is on the same basis as in other night schools; a
"preparatory department" is also in operation.

Attendance: 150. "Free transportation from Chicago to Vienna by way of New York,
London, Paris," etc., is offered to any graduate who has for "three years or more
paid regular fees in cash."

Teaching staff: 36.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $22,500 (estimated).

ILLINOIS 213

Laboratory facilities; The school occupies a badly lighted building, containing no-
thing that can be dignified by the name of equipment. There had been no dissecting
thus far (October to the middle of April), anatomy being didactically taught.
Persistent inquiry for the "dissecting-room" was, however, finally rewarded by
the sight of a dirty, unused, and almost inaccessible room containing a putrid
corpse, several of the members of which had been hacked off. There is a large
room called the chemical laboratory, its equipment "locked up,"" the tables spot-
less. "About ten" oil-immersion microscopes are claimed — also "locked up in the
storeroom." There is not even a pretense of anything else. Classes in session
were all taking dictation.

Clinical facilities: The top floor is the "hospital:" it contained two lonely patients.
Access to a private hospital two miles distant is also claimed.

Recently this school has been declared by the Illinois State Board of Health as "not
in good standing." The same action was taken once before, but was afterwards re-
voked; just why, it is impossible to find out; for the school was after the revoca-
tion just exactly what it was at the time of its suspension; and it is the same
to-day.
Date of visit: April, 1909.

(11) COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY: PHYSIO- MEDICAL. Organized 1885. An
independent school.

Entrance requirement: Such as satisfies the present interpretation of the law. A dili-
gent search in the office desk and safe failed to discover any credentials of students
now in the school.

Attendance: 33.

Teaching staff': 42, of whom 33 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: The school has no resources but fees, amounting
to $2935 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The equipment is very meager.

Clinical facilities: Clinical facilities amount to little: there were in the hospital last
year 167 patients, over one-half surgical; there is an annual attendance of 250 in
the dispensary.

Date of visit: April, 1909.

(12) HERING MEDICAL COLLEGE. Homeopathic. Organized 1892. This school teaches
homeopathic doctrine in its original purity.

Entrance requirement: "High school or equivalent."
Attendance: 32.

214 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Teaching staff: 44, of whom 30 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees, amounting to $3360 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The equipment is very meager.

Clinical facilities : These are very limited. Students are not admitted to the adjoining

hospital. There is a small dispensary.
Daitofvirit: April* 1909.

(13) HAHNEMANN MEDICAL COLLEGE. Homeopathic. Organized 1859. An indepen-
dent institution.

Entrance requirement : " High school or equivalent."

Attendance :130.

Teaching staff: 84, of whom 38 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees, amounting to $14,300 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The school occupies a building wretchedly dirty, excepting only
the single laboratory, fairly equipped, devoted to pathology and bacteriology. The
equipment covers in a meager way also anatomy, physiology, histology, chemistry.

Clinicalfacilities : In the adjoining hospital there are accommodations in the wards for
60 beds, but there are no ward clinics. The superintendent is a layman who " does
not believe in admitting students to the wards. There is no regular way for them
to see common acute diseases," as only amphitheater clinics are held. Hospital in-
ternes do all the obstetrical work ; students " look on." The school also holds two
appointments on the surgical side in the Cook County Hospital.
There is a fair dispensary.

Date ofvitit : April, 1909.

(14) LITTLEJOHN COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHY. An undisguised commercial enterprise.
Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 75.

Teaching staff: 43.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees, and income from patients.

Laboratory facilities : Practically none. At the time of the visit, some rebuilding was
in progress, in consequence of which even such laboratories as are claimed were,
except that of elementary chemistry, entirely out of commission and likely to re-
main so for months : but " teaching goes on all the same." Class-rooms were prac-
tically bare, except for chairs and a table.

Clinical facilities .-The Littlejohn Hospital, — a pay institution of 20 beds, mostly sur-

ILLINOIS 215

gical, — which can be of little use. It was claimed, too, that " medicine and surgery
are taught in the school," and color is lent to the statement by the presence on
the faculty of physicians teaching materia medica, etc.
Date of visit: December, 1909.

(15) THE POSTGRADUATE MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL. A stock company.
Teaching staff: 98.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees.

Laboratory facilities : A good working clinical laboratory.

Clinical facilities : The school offers clinical instruction in its own hospital, containing
a small number of beds, and in other Chicago institutions. The instruction is at-
tended by physicians for periods varying from a few weeks to a year.

Date of visit: April, 1909.

(16) CHICAGO POLYCLINIC. A postgraduate institution organized as a stock company.
Offers special courses to graduated physicians.

Attendance: Perhaps 30 at any given time; a total of 350 in the course of a year.
Teaching staff: 92, 30 being professors, 62 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance : Fees.

Laboratory facilities : A small clinical laboratory, the instruction in technique being
given by a first-year student in one of the night schools ; in the absence of the
instructor, he also conducts classes.

Clinical facilities : The main reliance is the Polyclinic Hospital of 80 beds, two-thirds

of them surgical.
Date of visit: December, 1909.

(17) CHICAGO EAR, EYE, NOSE, AND THROAT COLLEGE. A stock company offering
courses in certain specialties.

Attendance: 20 on average; average period of residence, two months; a few remain
six to twelve months.

Teaching staff: 22.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees.

Facilities: A fairly equipped dispensary with a daily attendance of 15 to 20 new
patients; a hospital with 10 ward beds, empty at time of visit, "but full a week
ago.1" The work is all immediately practical; there are no facilities for fundamen-
tal or intensive instruction or effort.

Date of visit : December, 1909.

216 MEDICAL EDUCATION

(18) ILLINOIS POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL. A stock company.

Entrance requirement: The M.D. degree.

Attendance: 6 to 8 at any given time.

Teaching staff': 86, of whom 26 are professors, 10 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees.

Laboratory facilities: Practically none.

Clinical facilities: The school offers courses at the West Side Hospital, a private in-
stitution of 86 beds occupied mostly by surgical cases. There is a large dispensary.
Date ofvitit: December, 1909.

General Considerations

THE city of Chicago is in respect to medical education the plague spot of the country.
The state law is fairly adequate, for it empowers the board of health to establish a
standard of preliminary education, laboratory equipment, and clinical facilities, thus
fixing the conditions which shall entitle a school to be considered reputable. In pur-
suance of these powers, the board has made the four-year high school or its equivalent
the basis, and has enumerated the essentials of the medical course, including, among
other things, clinical instruction through two annual terms.

With the indubitable connivance of the state board, these provisions are, and have
long been, flagrantly violated. Of the fourteen undergraduate medical schools above
described, the majority exist and prepare candidates for the Illinois state board ex-
aminations in unmistakable contravention of the law and the state board rules.
These schools are as follows : (1) Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery (Valpa-
raiso University), (2) Hahnemann Medical College, (3) Hering Medical College, (4)
Illinois Medical College, (5) Bennett Medical College, (6) Physio-Medical College of
Medicine and Surgery, (7) Jenner Medical College, (8) National Medical University,
(9) Reliance Medical College, (10) Littlejohn College of Osteopathy. Of these, only
one, the National Medical University, has been deprived of "good standing " by
the state board. Without exception, a large proportion of their attendance offers for
admission an " equivalent," which is not an equivalent in any sense whatsoever ; it
is nevertheless accepted without question by the state board, though the statute ex-
plicitly states that it can exact an equivalent by " satisfactory " examination. In the
case of the night schools,1 for instance, one or two years' requirements are satisfied

1 Even supposing the night schools enforced an entrance standard and actually provided laboratories
and hospitals of the right kind, the teaching of anything but didactic medicine at night is practically
impossible, because : (1) The time is too limited. The day school is in operation all day long and the
student has his evenings for study ; the night school can at most secure three or four hours when the stu-
dent is already physically fatigued. (2) Laboratory work by artificial light is bound to be unsatisfac-
tory, even if the lighting is good, which is not usually the case. (3) Hospital clinics, operations, etc.,
must be very limited at night, when the interest of the patient requires that he be allowed to rest.
Children's diseases cannot be studied at night at all. (4) The situation is rendered even more absurd
by the fact that, in addition to all these handicaps, the night school student frequently has to make
up some conditions in preliminary studies.

ILLINOIS 217

by " coaching " one night a week in each of the several subjects : one evening is de-
voted to Latin, the next to English, the next to mathematics. There is absolutely
no guarantee that the candidate accepted on the equivalent basis has had an educa-
tion even remotely resembling the high school training which the Illinois law intends
as the minimum upon which it will recognize a candidate for the physician's license.
If the state board should — as in duty bound — publicly brand these schools as "not
in good standing" by reason of their failure to require a suitable preliminary educa-
tion of their students, their graduates would be immediately excluded from practice
in Illinois ; adjoining states would rapidly follow suit, with the result that the schools
would shortly be exterminated. Fortunately, the case against them does not rest alone
on the question of entrance requirements : for not a single one of the schools men-
tioned furnishes clinical opportunities in proper abundance, and some of them even
fail to provide the stipulated training in other branches, e. g., anatomy. An efficient
and intelligent administration of the law would thus reduce in short order the medi-
cal schools of Chicago to three, Rush, Northwestern, and the College of Physicians
and Surgeons.1 In the matter of entrance requirements, Rush alone is secure. The
College of Physicians and Surgeons rests on the high school or equivalent basis;
if a scholastic equivalent, such as would be acceptable to the academic department
of the state university, is insisted on, the registration will be seriously diminished.
Northwestern is in a similar plight: it requires now a high school education or
equivalent, followed by a year of college which it does not get. If its standard were
enforced, its present attendance would be considerably reduced. At both Northwest-
ern and the College of Physicians and Surgeons the inequality and incapacity of the
present student body are frankly conceded. "The facilities are better than the stu-
dents," said a professor at the former; "the admission machinery doesn't stop the
unfit," said a professor at the latter. That both these schools will be driven by in-
ternal and external forces to a higher level, actually enforced, is inevitable. When
that happens, their attendance will materially shrink; and as higher standards will
check the invasion of medical schools by drifting waverers, and will tend to keep the
number of doctors in more nearly normal relation to the needs of the population, it
is not likely that either school will again attain its former size. This consideration is
rendered additionally important because it portends a marked reduction in income
through fees, upon which both schools still depend.

In the matter of teaching facilities, the three schools under discussion satisfy the
law ; but they satisfy the aspirations of their faculties only in varying degrees. The
scientific work of the University of Chicago, relied on by Rush, is excellent; the pro-
vision made by Northwestern and the College of Physicians and Surgeons is distinctly
inferior to it. Assuming that Northwestern will rise to an actual one or two year
college basis, it must provide correspondingly increased facilities both for the higher
grade students and for the more productive teaching body which these students will
aFor the American Medical Missionary College, see "Michigan."

218 MEDICAL EDUCATION

demand. There are, for instance, several full-time instructors, but they are without
an adequate force of assistants. The needs of the College of Physicians and Surgeons
are much greater. Its laboratory facilities and equipment are inadequate even for the
present student body ; and it has barely begun the development of a full-time teach-
ing staff in the scientific branches. Both these schools face an era of increased in-
vestment in plant and of considerably augmented running expenses, coinciding with
a period of reduced income from tuition fees.

On the clinical side, Rush and Northwestern do not differ substantially ; the College
of Physicians and Surgeons is somewhat inferior. Both Rush and Northwestern have
an exclusive staff connection with certain hospitals. Their hospital situation is there-
fore, as things go in this country, tolerable. They command a sufficient number of
cases, subject, however, to two defects that will be more acutely felt as clearer ideals
become dominant in medical education : (1) they are not in position freely to import
clinical teachers, nor (2) can they in general discontinue a professorial appointment
without to the same extent abridging their clinical resources; none of them completely
controls, even in a single hospital, the conditions under which clinical instruction is
given.1

The Cook County Hospital is common to all three. Its relations to the medical
schools have been subject to variation and disturbance. The institution is con-
ducted by a lay warden, who, though a politician, is now friendly to the schools.
At present, the staff is selected by civil service examination every six years. Rush
now holds twice as many appointments as either of the other two schools, a discre-
pancy that may be either emphasized, obliterated, or reversed at the next examina-
tion. The main clinical facilities of the several schools are thus precarious. They are
also limited: a recent unpleasantness — due, according to one version, to a quarrel
between certain doctors and some nurses who objected to the careless way in which
the doctors replaced the bed sheets — has resulted in the exclusion of students from
the wards. Patients are exhibited in rooms. The incident involves serious limitations
upon teaching methods, and illustrates the uncertainty which attaches to mere privi-
leges and courtesies. Cases cannot be assigned for intensive study to particular stu-
dents; hospital residents make the records and do the clinical laboratory work. The
undergraduate student can see conditions in abundance; he cannot at close range
observe processes in development. The Cook County Hospital is therefore, from a
strictly educational point of view, not a laboratory in which beginners can be trained
in a thorough technique. It is, however, immensely valuable as a storehouse of
illustrative material for students who have elsewhere received a satisfactory prelimi-
nary discipline.

None of the supplementary hospitals used by the schools cures these defects. They

1 Rush comes nearest to desirable conditions at Presbyterian Hospital, for staff appointments there
are by contract completely controlled by its faculty. But it is provided that "no patient shall be made
the subject of clinical instruction without his or her consent.

ILLINOIS 219

are too small; their purpose is only secondarily educational; friction is liable to arise
over efforts to retain patients for teaching purposes; the students remain more or
less outsiders.

The modernization of medical education in Chicago requires, then, that two of
the three schools in question should greatly strengthen their laboratory instruction,
and that all three should strengthen their clinical instruction. The number of stu-
dents to be provided for is a factor in determining a definite line of procedure. Rush
has on its two-year college basis 488 students; Northwestern had in its first-year
class, on a very loosely enforced one-year college basis, 66; the inevitable two-year
standard will greatly reduce this number. Should the College of Physicians and Sur-
geons go to the two-year college standard, — an inevitable development if it lives, —
it would suffer similarly. It seems fair to estimate, then, that the actual number of
medical students in Chicago on a two-year college basis will not be too large to be
cared for in a single school adequately equipped with laboratories and hospital.
As medical education on the proper basis cannot be attempted outside a university,
and as none of the three universities now teaching medicine in Chicago is likely to
abandon the field to the others, it is suggested in the interest of efficiency and eco-
nomy that (1) each of the three universities continue to provide — like the University
of Chicago — the instruction of the first two years; (2) all three universities combine
to form a clinical department under joint management, the first step towards which
would be a concerted effort to procure a proper hospital for the use of third and
fourth year men. The sum necessary to procure three such hospitals is so large that
it is highly improbable that as separate institutions the schools can acquire sepa-
rate and adequate clinical departments. Inasmuch as there is no demand for gradu-
ates exceeding the capacity of one clinical school, it would be sheer extravagance to
equip three on the basis proposed. The Cook County and other hospitals would, on
the suggested arrangement, play the part for which they are exactly suited in fur-
nishing illustrative material for advanced students whose discipline had been else-
where looked to, and in making possible the development of instruction for gradu-
ates in all the specialties, — a form of opportunity for which, just for lack of differ-
entiation and organization, our physicians are still forced to go abroad. A great
opportunity is thus fairly within the grasp of Chicago : the conditions to its realiza-
tion are honesty and intelligence on the part of the state authorities, and cooperation
between the three great universities of the state. The execution of this plan might
set the country at large to thinking on the wisdom and necessity of coordinating our
educational enterprises. Everywhere, thus far, our higher education has worn a com-
petitive aspect. Some good has been thus accomplished; but now that local or nu-
merical competition can be replaced by scientific and scholarly competition, to which
the entire country and indeed the civilized world are parties, we begin to realize the
waste and demoralization due to institutional competition. It is difficult to see how
the state of Illinois, which in the interest of public health ought to be a factor in

220 MEDICAL EDUCATION

medical education, can make an effective contribution thereto except by cooperation
with the Chicago schools. Should the state seek to develop its own school in Chicago
with the inevitable low tuition fees, great friction must result. Much preferable to
conflict would be the withdrawal of the state from participation in clinical instruc-
tion altogether, content in that event with a half-school at Urbana, strengthened,
be it hoped, by state laboratories of public health. The entire situation presents
a rare opportunity for educational statesmanship.

INDIANA

Population, 2,808,115. Number of physicians, 5,036. Ratio, 1 : 558.
Number of medical schools, 2.

BLOOMINGTON-INDIANAPOLIS: (Population: Bloomington, 8,902; Indian-
apolis, 249,426).

(1) INDIANA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. Started at Bloomington, 1908, it first
gave two years' work at Bloomington, 1905, and the entire course at Indianapolis,
1909, through absorption of the local school. The double department is an organic
part of the state university.

Entrance requirement; One year of college work.
Attendance: 266, 94 per cent from Indiana.

Teaching staff: 175, of whom 99 are professors. The laboratory branches at Bloom-
ington are taught by full-time teachers, some of whom will for a while divide
their time between Indianapolis and Bloomington. The Indianapolis teachers are
otherwise all practitioners.

Resources available for maintenance: Both departments will be hereafter supported
out of the general funds of the university, as the Bloomington department has
hitherto been, — at a heavy loss, of course. Fees (amounting at Indianapolis and
Bloomington together to $31,240) are paid into the university treasury.

Laboratory facilities : At Bloomington separate laboratories with good equipment
are provided for pathology and bacteriology, physiology and pharmacology, and
anatomy, — the last-named strong in histology and neurology. Embryology is
taught in the department of biology, physiological chemistry in the department
of chemistry. Books and periodicals are accessible.

At Indianapolis the laboratories of the absorbed school were limited, but the
university has already taken some steps to bring them up to the level of the Bloom-
ington department.

Clinical facilities : Clinical instruction will be given at Indianapolis alone. The city
dispensary is under control of the school faculty and has just been placed in charge

INDIANA 221

of a man of modern training. The attendance has been good. The City Hospital
staff is appointed by the board of health on nomination of the university. The
facilities are fair, but they have been used to little advantage in the past. There
is no pavilion for contagious diseases.
Date of visit: December, 1909.

VALPARAISO: Population, 6280.

(2) VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY. This institution offers first two years at Valparaiso and
all four in Chicago. (See Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery.) The two-year
department was organized in 1901.

Entrance requirement: A high school course or its equivalent.
Attendance: 25.

Teaching staff: Two instructors conduct the classes in physiology, pathology, bac-
teriology, and anatomy, in the medical building. Chemistry, materia medica, and
pharmacy are taught by men who give courses in these same branches to other
students. The pathologist spends one-third of his time in the Chicago depart-
ment.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees only.

Laboratory facilities : There is a simple but good equipment for teaching the neces-
sary branches in an elementary form, pathology being perhaps the weakest by
reason of the small amount of gross material available. The time of the teachers
is consumed in routine work.

Date of visit : December, 1909.

General Considerations

THE situation in the state is, thanks to the intelligent attitude of the university,
distinctly hopeful, though it will take time to work it out fully. The university
has just secured complete control of the Indianapolis school. The state board has
already come to its help by making the two-year college standard, in force at the
university in 1910, the legal minimum for practice within the state. This places medi-
cal education in Indiana, as it already is in Minnesota, in the hands of the state uni-
versity. The Bloomington department has been of such a character that it was easily
possible to make it worthy of college-bred students, but the detachment of its teachers
for regular service at Indianapolis should not long continue. While it is highly im-
portant that close relations be encouraged, it is necessary to accomplish this by pro-
gressively strengthening the Indianapolis end.

The Indianapolis school has been of the ordinary local type of the better sort.
In order to make the school attractive to highly qualified students, it will be neces-
sary (1) to employ full-time men in the work of the first two years, (2) to strengthen

222 MEDICAL EDUCATION

the laboratory equipment, (3) greatly to improve the organization and conduct of
the clinical courses. The trustees have formally committed themselves to this policy.
It would appear necessary for some years to regard the needs of the Indianapolis
department as a first lien on the increasing income of the university, if the univer-
sity is to make good the ideals indicated by its entrance requirement. It can do Indi-
ana no greater service in any direction. That done, Indiana will be one of the few
states that have successfully solved the problem of medical education.

IOWA

Population, 2,192,608. Number of physicians, 3,624. Ratio, 1 : 605.
Number of medical schools, 4.

DES MOINES: Population, 89,113.

(1) DRAKE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. Organized in 1882 as an independent
school, it became a university department in 1900.1

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school education.
Attendance: 106.

Teaching staff: 16 professors and 29 of other grade; total, 45. There are no whole-
time teachers. Student assistants are employed in the laboratories.

Resources available for maintenance: The school is practically dependent on its fees,
the volume of which is not large, — for the funds of the university are too slender
to permit any considerable allotment to the medical department. The total budget
of the department was $12,417, of which $9505 came from student fees, $1239
from interest.

Laboratory facilities : Modest laboratories, whose condition speaks well for the con-
scientiousness of those in charge, are provided for chemistry, anatomy, pathology,
and bacteriology. The provision for physiology is somewhat more slender.

Clinical facilities : The school conducts clinics by courtesy at two hospitals, where
instruction is given in a demonstrative way for some twelve to fifteen hours weekly.
The opportunities are in every respect inadequate: the time is too short, the
amount of material available too little, and the opportunities open to students too
limited. A fair amount of obstetrical work is obtained.

The school owns and controls a small dispensary, fairly well equipped and
painstakingly conducted.

Date of vint: April, 1909.

1 As this report goes to press, it is announced that a fund of $100,000 has been subscribed with which
to improve this school.

IOWA 223

(2) STILL COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHY. Organized 1898. An independent school.
Entrance requirement: Less than a common school education.
Attendance: 115.

Teaching staff: 15, of whom 13 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $17,250 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : These are mainly limited to signs. " Anatomy " is painted pro-
minently on a door which, on being opened, reveals an amphitheater ; "Physiology**
on a door which, on being opened, reveals a class-room with an almost empty
bookcase, but no laboratory equipment; the key to "Histology" could not be found;
"Chemistry" proved to be a disorderly elementary laboratory with some slight out-
fit for bacteriology besides. The dissecting-room was inadequate and disorderly.

Clinical facilities : The school makes no pretense of having hospital facilities. The
catalogue states: "Cases" — pay cases of course — "needing hospital service are
placed in the hospitals of the city," — where the students cannot see them. The
catalogue says of the infirmary: "The patient in no way comes in contact with the
college clinic."

Everything about the school indicates that it is a business. One is therefore not sur-
prised to find the following advertisement in the local newspaper: "Have your
case diagnosed at Still College of Osteopathy, 1442 Locust Street." (Des Moines
Register and Leader, Nov. 3, 1909.)
Date of visit: April, 1909.

IOWA CITY: Population, 9007.

(3) STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. Organized 1869. An organic
department of the state university.

Entrance requirement: One year of college work.
Attendance: 267, 87 per cent from Iowa.

Teaching staff: 32, of whom 12 are professors. The laboratory instructors devote
full time to their work ; the clinical teachers are practitioners, some of them non-
resident : the professor of surgery resides at Sioux City, the professor of gyneco-
logy, who is likewise dean of the department, at Dubuque.

Resources available for maintenance: The department is supported by state appro-
priations. Its income from fees is $13,707 ; its budget, $35,216; the university hos-
pital budget is $33,745. Chemistry, general expense (light, heat, etc.), and a share
of expense of general administration are not included in these figures.

Laboratory facilities : The equipment and instruction in the scientific branches are,

224 MEDICAL EDUCATION

in general, good. This is particularly true of anatomy, which is admirably cared
for. The departments of pathology and physiology lack a sufficient number of
skilled assistants. An excellent museum and books are at hand.

Clinical facilities: The university hospital is, as it now stands, too small; the amount
of material available in medicine, obstetrics, and contagious diseases has been very
limited. An appropriation of $75,000 has, however, been made for the purpose of
increasing the hospital capacity. The methods of clinical teaching hitherto pur-
sued have not been entirely modern, mainly for lack of proper organization and
material. Supplementary clinical material is obtainable at the Sisters' Hospital
and the Tuberculosis Sanitarium.

The dispensary is just in process of development. The dispensary clinic is so far
largely limited to the eye, ear, nose, and throat.

Latt of visit: November, 1909.

(4) STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA COLLEGE OF HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE. Organized 1877.
An organic department of the state university.

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school education.
Attendance: 42, 83 per cent from Iowa.

Teaching staff: 10 professors and 15 of other grade. The professor of materia medica
and therapeutics, who is likewise dean of the department, resides at Des Moines,
the professor of theory and practice at Davenport.

Resources available for maintenance: The department is supported by state appropri-
ations. Its income from fees is $1864, its budget is $5453, its hospital budget is
$7847. The school budget does not include expense incurred for laboratory in-
struction for a reason that the next paragraph will explain.

Laboratory facilities : Homeopathic students receive their laboratory instruction to-
gether with regular students of medicine, though there is now a difference of one
year of college work and there will be next year a difference of two such years in their
preparation, unless a resolution adopted by the board of education establishing the
same basis of admission in the two departments becomes effective before that time.

Clinical facilities: The department possesses a hospital of 35 beds, quite inadequate
to its purpose. The dispensary is correspondingly slender. Operating during part
of last year, it received only 134 cases, of which 101 were diseases of the eye, ear,
nose, and throat.

Date ofvitit: April, 1909.

General Considerations

IOWA is a state in which there are now between two and three times as many doctors
as are really needed. The population of the state is increasing slowly, if at all. There

KANSAS 225

is, then, from the standpoint of the public interest no reason why a great number
of physicians should be produced ; there is no reason why any physician should be
graduated unless his entrance into the profession will actually improve it. Further
dilution would be unpardonable.

Of the four medical schools in the state none is at this time satisfactory. The
osteopathic school at Des Moines is a disgrace to the state and should be summarily
suppressed. In the absence of police power to terminate its career in this way, its
graduates, undertaking as they do to treat all sorts of diseases, should be compelled
to meet whatever standards are applied to other practitioners. The medical depart-
ment of Drake University and the homeopathic department of the state university
are well intentioned but feeble institutions that only a large outlay could convert
into acceptable and efficient schools. Elevation of standards will probably embarrass
rather than aid; for the urgent necessity of additional outlay will coincide with a de-
crease in the revenues on which Drake, at least, wholly depends. It would be the part
of wisdom to retire from a contest to which the institution is clearly unequal; at any
rate, it ought to be content to limit its endeavor to the work of the first two years.

The homeopathic department of the state university has now a small attendance
on a relatively low entrance basis. As its students receive their scientific instruction
with the classes now on a one-year, and hereafter to be on a two-year, college basis,
it is clear that the entrance standard of the homeopathic department must be cor-
respondingly elevated. The already slender enrolment is therefore destined still further
to shrink. For so small a body of students the state is not likely to provide increased
clinical facilities and a resident faculty of its own. Wisdom would therefore counsel
the adoption in Iowa of the Minnesota plan : the two medical departments of the
state university should be consolidated, with a provision for special teaching in ma-
teria medica and therapeutics for students who desire the homeopathic diploma.

The two university hospitals could thus be added together; the smaller would
perhaps be devoted to obstetrics; the larger, with the additional wing now to be
added, would provide comfortably for general medical and surgical clinics. The cre-
ation of a strong resident faculty, and the adoption of a liberal and enlightened
policy in dealing with the sick poor of the state, would place Iowa City in position
to duplicate the honorable record which the University of Michigan has, under sim-
ilar circumstances, made at Ann Arbor.

KANSAS

Population, 1,663,438. Number of physicians, 2650. Ratio, 1: 628.
Number of medical schools, 3.

LAWRENCE-ROSED ALE: (Population: Lawrence, 13,678; Rosedale, 3270—
suburb of the two Kansas Cities, population, 286,074).

226 MEDICAL EDUCATION

(1) UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. The Scientific Department, at Law-
rence, was organized in 1899; the Clinical Department, at Rosedale, was organized
by merger with a local school in 1905.

Entrance requirement: Two years of college work.
Attendance: 89, 79 from Kansas, 8 from Missouri.

Teaching staff: At Lawrence, anatomy, physiology, and bacteriology are taught by
teachers whose instruction is confined to medical students; but the professor of
anatomy is also professor of gynecology at Rosedale and practises his specialty.
The pathologist is expected to eke out his income by outside work. Physiology,
chemistry, and pharmacy are taught in general laboratories devoted to those sub-
jects. The medical classes are not always separate.

At Rosedale there is a teaching staff of 63, of whom 24 are professors. Two of
them devote their whole time to teaching pathology, bacteriology, and clinical
pathology. A third, the dean of this end, likewise gives his entire time to the
school and hospital.

Resources available for maintenance: The medical school shares in the general funds
of the university. The budget for the current year is about $17,000 for the Sci-
entific Department, and $23,000 for the Clinical Department. Income in fees,
$5030.

Laboratory faculties : The laboratories for anatomy, chemistry, and physiology are
good and in active operation. Pathology and bacteriology are, so far, less highly
developed. Books and current scientific periodicals are accessible.

Clinical facilities: The Clinical Department has a small hospital of 35 beds, not
used, however, to the best advantage, partly because the faculty is not composed
of men whose training has been modern, partly because, being practitioners, they
cannot devote time enough to teaching. The school enjoys additional privileges
of the usual kind at a Catholic hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, and at the City
Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. The obstetrical work is mainly out-patient;
contagious diseases are rarely seen. On the whole, far too little clinical material
under proper control is offered. An excellent building, well equipped, devoted to
pathology, clinical pathology, and bacteriology, adjoins the university hospital. It
contains a few books and some current periodicals.

Two dispensaries are available, one at the Rosedale building, not used for teach-
ing until this year; the other, the so-called North End Dispensary, where a fair
amount of material has hitherto been handled in an incredibly slipshod manner.

Each of the two parts of the university school of medicine has its own dean ; for all
practical purposes, the university conducts two half-schools.
Dot* ofvitit: November, 1909.

KANSAS 227

(2) WESTERN ECLECTIC COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY. Organized 1898. A
stock company.

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 21.

Teaching staff": 32, of whom 30 are professors, 2 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to perhaps $1600 this year.

Laboratory facilities : These comprise a few small, indescribably dirty and disorderly
rooms, containing three microscopes, a small amount of physiological apparatus,
some bacteriological stains, a few filthy specimens, and meager equipment for ele-
mentary chemistry, but no running water. All laboratory work is conducted by one
teacher, who serves in the same capacity in the local osteopathic and homeopathic
schools and does commercial work besides. No anatomy was going on at the time
of the visit, as dissection runs only from January 3 to March 12.

Clinical facilities : Practically none. A wretched room is called the "Dispensary,"
and an attendance of "about three a day" is claimed; it is hoped that this "can
be worked up to six a day." The catalogue states that "clinics are held weekly at
the Kansas City, Missouri, General Hospital," but the statement is denied by the
superintendent of the hospital.

Date of visit: November, 1909.

TOPEKA: Population, 45,143.

(3) KANSAS MEDICAL COLLEGE. Established 1890. Since 1902 the medical depart-
ment of Washburn College, which teaches chemistry to the medical students, but
is without control of appointments in the medical faculty.

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school course or its equivalent.
Attendance: 65, 92 per cent from Kansas.

Teaching staff: 47, 31 being professors. There are no instructors giving their whole
time to the school, except in so far as chemistry, above mentioned, is concerned.

Resources available for maintenance: Practically only fe"es, amounting to $4876 a year.

Laboratory facilities: The school occupies a three-story building, on the upper floors
of which there have been improvised laboratories for pathology and bacteriology.
They contain the necessary equipment for routine teaching, but are poorly kept.
There is a small amount of apparatus for physiological demonstrations. The dis-
secting-room is indescribably filthy ; it contained, in addition to necessary tables,
a single, badly hacked cadaver, and was simultaneously used as a chicken yard.1
There is no museum, only a few old books, some charts, a few models, etc.

1 This is explained as follows : " It had not been in use for eight months or so and would not be in use

228 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Clinical facilities: A total of eleven hours a week of clinical instruction, only nine of
which can be attended by any one student, is offered at four different hospitals.
The opportunities, limited as they are, are largely surgical. The feeling towards
the school is unusually cordial, but the hospitals lack the necessary equipment
and organization for effective teaching.

At the time the school was visited a small room was used for a dispensary; the
attendance was slight; there was no equipment at all. Recently larger quarters
have been provided.

Date of vitit : November, 1909.

General Considerations

RECENT action making a year of college work the minimum preliminary to prac-
tise in Kansas will wipe out the eclectic school at Kansas City and the Topeka
school, both of which would, however, die out even on the present standard. The
future of medical education in the state, therefore, very properly lies with the state
university. This institution has shown the desire to provide instruction of high grade
by raising its entrance requirements until they now call for two years of college work;
but it did not realize that it was incumbent upon it to improve facilities and in-
struction at the same time. Great efforts must therefore be made to hasten their de-
velopment, for the higher entrance requirement is already in force. The school is
now a divided school. It would be a simple matter to develop the laboratory end at
Lawrence; it will be difficult and expensive to develop the clinical end at Rosedale
correspondingly ; and still more difficult, to establish effective cooperation between
the severed halves of the department. The needs of a university medical department
are so great that the university will find it necessary to refrain from many other
projects, pending the upbuilding of a creditable school of medicine. It is therefore
unfortunate that the educational funds of the state have been already to some extent
needlessly consumed in the duplication of engineering and normal departments
within the several state institutions. No comprehensive and well coordinated scheme
of state educational development has been worked out. It would seem essential in
the first place to demarcate the respective provinces of the several state institutions,
so that each would care for certain interests without trespassing on the ground re-
served to the others. That done, medicine would fall to the state university and would
include a public health laboratory. Certain fundamental questions respecting the lo-
cation, organization, and general scope of the entire department would next require
to be settled. Thereafter, the plan adopted could be realized unit by unit, year by year.

until cold weather. [It was then the middle of November. 1 The cadaver happened to be there be-
cause of the private studies of one of the professors, who put it there for his own convenience. In the
same way, because the room was not in public use and would not be for some time, another member
of the faculty stored there, for use in embryology, the coop of live chickens."

KENTUCKY 229

KENTUCKY

Population, 2,406,859. Number of physicians, 3708. Ratio, 1 : 649.
Number of medical schools, 3.

LOUISVILLE: Population, 240,160.

(1) UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. Organized 1837, it has recently
absorbed four other schools. Until lately the university was limited to loosely
aggregated schools of law and medicine ; latterly an academic department without
endowment has been started.

Entrance requirement : Less than a high school education. Examples were found of
students admitted from two-year high schools or less.

Attendance : 600.

Teaching" staff: 90, of whom 40 are professors. The distribution of the chairs is sig-
nificant : the major medical staff contains twelve names, six of them professors ; sur-
gery, twelve names, all professors. The laboratory branches are in marked contrast :
two names make the major staff in physiology, one in chemistry, one in pathology
and bacteriology. There are four whole-time professors of modern training in the
scientific departments. Assistants, some of them also giving entire time to the
school, are provided.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees, amounting to $75,125.

Laboratory facilities : Teaching laboratories are provided for chemistry, pathology,
bacteriology, physiology, and pharmacy. They are inadequate in appointments and
teaching force for the thorough teaching of the fundamental sciences to so large
a student body. A separate building has just been set apart for anatomy, opera-
tive surgery, and the city morgue.

Clinical facilities : The school has a hospital of 50 beds, with an average of 30 pa-
tients, two-thirds of the cases being surgical, and not all available for teaching.
Obstetrical cases are rare, but there is an out-patient obstetrical service. At the
City Hospital eight amphitheater clinics are held weekly for classes containing
from 100 to 300 students. There are no regular ward classes. The obstetrical ward
is not open to students ; there is no pavilion for contagious diseases. The hospital
facilities are therefore poor in respect to both quality and extent : unequal to the
fair teaching of an even smaller body of students, they are made to suffice for the
largest school in the country.

The school dispensary has an average daily attendance of over one hundred.
It is regularly used for teaching on the section method.

Date of visit : December, 1909.

230 MEDICAL EDUCATION

(2) SOUTHWESTERN HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1892. An independent
school.

Entrance requirement: The same as that of the University of Louisville Medical
Department.

Attendance: 13.

Teaching staff: 27, 12 being professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $1100.

Laboratory facilities : There is no outfit worth speaking of in any department ; the
building is wretchedly dirty, especially the room said to be used for anatomy.
There is nothing to indicate recent dissecting.

Clinical facilities : The school gets one-fifth of the patients admitted to the City
Hospital and can use them for demonstrative purposes.

There is no organized dispensary.
Date of visit : January, 1909.

(3) LOUISVILLE NATIONAL MEDICAL COLLEGE (Colored). An independent school, organ-
ized 1888, now affiliated with the colored State University.

Entrance requirement: Less than high school education.

Attendance : 40.

Teaching" staff": 23, of whom 17 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $2560.

Laboratory facilities : Nominal.

Clinical facilities: A small and scrupulously clean hospital of 8 beds is connected with

the school.
Datt of vifit : January, 1909.

General Considerations

THE situation in Kentucky is a simple one. The homeopathic school is without merit.
Its graduates deserve no recognition whatsoever, for it lacks the most elementary
teaching facilities. The University of Louisville has a large, scattered plant, unequal
to the strain which numbers put upon it. In the old days, Louisville, with a half-
dozen " regular "" schools, was a popular medical center, to which crude boys thronged
from the plantations. The schools offered little beyond didactic teaching. Now, they
have been arithmetically added together; the resulting school is indeed superior on
the laboratory side to any of its component parts ; but there are radical defects for
which there is no cure in sight. The classes are unmanageably huge ; the laboratories
overcrowded and undermanned; clinical facilities, meager at best, broken into bits
in order to be distributed among the aggregated faculty. To carry the school at all,

LOUISIANA 231

a large attendance is necessary ; but a large attendance implies a low standard. The
situation is thus practically deadlocked.

The outlook is not promising; for there is no indication of such support, financial
or academic, as would be required in order to reconstruct the institution on accept-
able lines. Elsewhere a strong college or university has been in reach : as, for example,
across the Ohio, Indiana University has just now put its hand to the plow and
will not turn back. But in Kentucky the state university is totally unequal to the
task. It labors under the initial disadvantage of being situated in another town, —
not the less a disadvantage because capable of being overcome; more serious, how-
ever, is its educational ineptitude. It has never been an active educational factor,
and having now chosen a politician, without educational qualification or experience,
as its president, its immediate future promises little. From the existing so-called aca-
demic department of the University of Louisville neither aid nor ideals can come.
It is quite without resources. We have indeed progressed too far in our social and
educational development to use the word "university ""for an enterprise of this kind.
Classes in literature, languages, and elementary science may indeed be organized by
volunteer teachers, in hours left open by their regular engagements, or by instruc-
tors supported from year to year by subscription ; they may discharge a highly use-
ful office in any community, but they ought to be called by their right name. An
academic department of a university they are not : why should they not be described as
a people's institute, or by some other designation calculated to indicate their actual
character?1 The loose use of the words "college*1 and "university" prolongs educa-
tional chaos; it hinders the apprehension of genuine and fundamental educational
distinctions. Assuredly, an institute of the type described cannot dominate or trans-
form a hitherto independent group of medical schools.

LOUISIANA

Population, 1,618,358. Number of physicians, 1798. Ratio, 1 : 900.
Number of medical schools, 2.

NEW ORLEANS: Population, 332,169.

(1) MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE TULANE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA. Organized in
1834, the school affiliated with the University of Louisiana in 1845, and with Tulane
in 1884, at which date the University of Louisiana became Tulane University. In
1902 it assumed its present status as an organic part of the university.

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school education or its equivalent, admin-
istered by the academic authorities. The actual standard is somewhat below the
nominal standard, though gradually rising towards it.

1 These comments apply with equal force to Toledo.

«S« MEDICAL EDUCATION

Attendance: 439.

Teaching staff: 75, of whom 17 are professors. The laboratory branches are in charge
of five men, who give their entire time to teaching and investigation.

Resources available for maintenance: Endowment funds, aggregating about $900,000,
yield an income of $26,000 annually ; fees amount to $67,500. The budget of the
department amounts to $101,781.

Laboratory facilities: New and excellent laboratories are provided for the work of
the first and second years. The professors in charge represent modern ideals, and
are enthusiastically engaged in reconstructing the entire school on progressive
lines. The anatomical museum is one of the best in the country. The library is small.

Clinical facilities: The school enjoys unusual privileges and opportunities in the
Charity Hospital, an institution of 1050 beds. Recently an additional ward for
surgery and gynecology has been added, full control of the services being vested
in the Tulane faculty by the terms of the gift. The abundant material is freely
used by the medical faculty, though certain defects of organization, equipment,
and relationship must be corrected in order to render the situation ideal. The
main point, however, is secure, for the position of the medical school in the hos-
pital is ensured through legislative enactment. The professorship in medicine has
recently been filled by importation without any friction whatsoever.
The dispensary service is adequate.

Postgraduate instruction in specialties is offered by the New Orleans Polyclinic,
affiliated with the Tulane University.

(2) FLINT MEDICAL COLLEGE (Colored). Organized in 1889, it is a department of New
Orleans University, which is managed by the Freedman's Aid Society of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, North.

Attendance: 24.

Teaching staff: 15, of whom 6 are professors. All are practitioners.

Resources available for maintenance: Tuition fees, $1300 (estimated), and small ap-
propriations voted by the Freedman's Aid Society constitute the income. The entire
budget, including that of the hospital adjoining, is less than $10,000 annually.

Laboratory facilities : There is scant equipment in anatomy, chemistry, pathology,
and bacteriology. The rooms are in poor condition.

Clinical facilities: The school controls a hospital of 20 beds, with an average of 17
patients monthly, and a dispensary with an average daily attendance of one or two.
Date ofvitit: January, 1909.

MAINE 233

General Considerations

THE medical department of Tulane University is one of a very few existing southern
schools that deserve development. The south is in general overcrowded with schools
with which nothing can be done; for they are conducted by old-time practitioners,
who could not use improved teaching facilities if they were provided. The case is
different at Tulane. Its recent reorganization has put imported men of modern train-
ing and ideals in charge of the most important departments, laboratory and clinical.
There is no question that if properly supported, they will quickly bring the institu-
tion to a position of commanding influence. To achieve this result, the school must
be freed of the necessity of so largely relying upon fees for its support. For once
rendered by endowment comparatively independent, it can use its superior opportu-
nities as a lever to brace up the general educational situation of the southern states.
It could compel those seeking these opportunities to improve their preparation at
least to the full limit of local possibilities. The urgent need of the south is an object
lesson in medical education, such as will prominently embody what is sound and de-
sirable; and such an object lesson the medical department of Tulane could readily
be made: it possesses already the laboratories and the hospital; it requires only the
means that will enable it to utilize them fully.

Flint Medical College is a hopeless affair, on which money and energy alike are
wasted. The urgent need in respect to the medical education of the negro is con-
centration of resources slender at best on a single southern institution. Much the
most favorably situated for this purpose is Meharry Medical College at Nashville.

MAINE

Population, 724,508. Number of physicians, 1198. Ratio, 1 : 600.
Number of medical schools, 1.

BRUNSWICK-PORTLAND: (Population:1 Brunswick, 2321; Portland, 58,512).

MEDICAL SCHOOL OF MAINE. Organized 1820. A divided school, being the medical
department of Bowdoin College.

Entrance requirement: Four-year high school diploma or equivalent, ascertained by
examination, conducted, however, under the auspices of the medical school, not
by Bowdoin College, and below the college standard. Certificates are accepted far
below standard in value.

Attendance: 81, 86 per cent from Maine.

Teaching staff: 35, 14 being professors, 21 of other grade.

1 Census Bureau without data.

234 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Resources available for maintenance: From endowment, $7600; from fees, $8100;
total, $15,700.

Laboratory facilities :The laboratory branches are taught in the medical school building
at Brunswick with the exception of chemistry, which is well provided for in the col-
lege laboratories ; the equipment covering physiology, bacteriology, and pathology
is slender. There is nothing in pharmacology at all. There are no whole-time teachers
in the scientific branches. The professor of anatomy is non-resident; his main duty
is lecturing, the dissecting-room being supervised by recent graduates, engaged in
practice. "The professor looks in occasionally." The professor of pathology is phy-
sical director of Bowdoin College. The professor of physiology is non-resident.

Clinical facilities: Clinical instruction is given at Portland by teachers who have little
commerce with the laboratories at Brunswick. The chief clinical reliance of the
school is the Maine General Hospital, where instruction is given principally in
the amphitheater, as a majority of the cases are surgical. Obstetrical work is not
to be counted on. Internes do the clinical laboratory work and make up case his-
tories. The records are indexed only by name of the patient. Additional clinical
material is obtained at the Eye and Ear Infirmary, Children's Hospital, etc.

Students spend also a small amount of time at a thoroughly wretched city dis-
pensary, where the cases are few, where no records are kept, and where not even
copies of prescriptions are filed. The dispensary does not own a microscope.

A course in clinical microscopy is given at the college building in Portland.
"Urine and sputum are gathered, and students are told about the cases from
which they come." Neither end of this school meets the requirements for the teach-
ing of modern medicine.

Date of visit: October, 1909.

[For general discussion see " New England," p. 261.]

MARYLAND

Population, 1,319,132. Number of physicians, 2012. Ratio, 1 : 658.
Number of medical schools, 7.

BALTIMORE: Population, 583,475.

(1) MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. Established 1893. An
organic university department.

Entrance requirement: The bachelors degree, representing specific attainments in
chemistry, physics, biology, German, and French.

Attendance: 297.

Teaching staff: 112, of whom 23 are professors. All the laboratory teaching is con-
ducted by instructors who give their entire time to teaching and research ; the heads

MARYLAND 235

of the clinical departments are salaried teachers attached to the Johns Hopkins
Hospital.

Resources available for maintenance: The income from tuition fees is $60,542, that
from endowments $19,687,making a total of $80,229. The budget calls for$102,429,
not including salaries of the clinical faculty and other items carried by the Johns
Hopkins Hospital, which is thus actually an integral part of the medical school.
The productive hospital endowments now aggregate $3,632,289, not including the
bequests for the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic and the Harriet Lane Johnson Home
for Children.

Laboratory facilities: These facilities are in every respect unexcelled. As the institu-
tion has been from the beginning on a graduate basis, teaching and research have
been always equally prominent in its activities.

Clinical facilities: The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Dispensary provide practically
ideal opportunities. The medical staff of the hospital and the clinical faculty of
the medical school are identical; the scientific laboratories ranged around the hos-
pital are in close touch with clinical problems, immediate and investigative. The
medical school plant is thus an organic whole, in which laboratories and clinics
are inextricably interwoven. Recent foundations have greatly augmented the ori-
ginal hospital plant in the direction of psychiatry, pediatrics, and tuberculosis.
Three hundred and eighty-five beds under complete control are now available.

The dispensary is largely attended, and is admirably conducted from the stand-
point of both public service and pedagogic efficiency.

Date ofvitit: December, 1909,

(2) COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. Established 1872. An independent insti-
tution.

Entrance requirement: Less than a high school education.
Attendance: 252.

Teaching staff": 59, of whom 21 are professors, 38 of other grade. One teacher devotes
his entire time to medical instruction.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $39,000.

Laboratory facilities : Ordinary working laboratories are provided for bacteriology,
histology, and pathology, including surgical pathology ; the chemical laboratory
provides satisfactorily for general chemistry. The dissecting-room is fair, as far as
it goes. There is no experimental pharmacology and no student work in experi-
mental physiology. The museum consists of several hundred specimens; the library,
of which there is a librarian in charge, of perhaps 1500 volumes and a few current
periodicals. The undeveloped character of the laboratories is due, (1) to the pay-

286 MEDICAL EDUCATION

ment of faculty dividends; (2) to the application of current fee income to the dis-
charge of building debts.

Clinical facilities: The school completely controls the adjoining hospital, of which
some 210 beds, including a maternity ward, are available for teaching. Ward-
teaching on the section plan is in use. The clinical laboratory is open to the
students.

The dispensary occupies an excellent suite of rooms ; the attendance is ample.

Dat« ofvint: March, 1909.

(8) UNIVERSITY or MARYLAND SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. Organized 1807. Essentially an
independent institution with a university charter, though nominally the medical
department of St. John's College (Annapolis) .

Entrance requirement: Less than a high school education.

Attendance: 316.

Teaching staff': 61, of whom 24 are professors, 37 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $44,530 (estimated), out of
which dividends are paid to the faculty and a large mortgage debt carried.

Laboratory facilities : Good undergraduate laboratories adequate to routine teaching
are provided in two poorly kept buildings for the following subjects: chemistry,
physiology, including physiological chemistry and histology, pathology and bac-
teriology. Anatomy is poor. There is a small museum. In a separate building is a
large and interesting library, but it is open only two hours each day.

Clinical facilities: The school controls its own hospital, opposite the laboratory build-
ings, about 140 beds being available for teaching. The hospital records are well
kept, senior students who pay for the privilege serving as clinical assistants. A
separate maternity ward furnishes obstetrical work in abundance.
The dispensary is large, properly equipped, and well kept.

Date of vitit : March, 1909.

(4) BALTIMORE MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1881. An independent institution.

Entrance requirement: Much less than a four-year high school education. Advanced
standing is freely granted to failed students dropped from other schools.

Attendance: 392.

Teaching staff: 63, of whom 20 are professors, 43 of other grade. There are no
teachers giving entire time to medical instruction.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to 833,424.

Laboratory facilities : The school possesses a new and very attractive laboratory

MARYLAND 237

building. It is well equipped for undergraduate instruction in chemistry and
pathology; inadequately for physiology and bacteriology. A large room with
ample material provides for dissecting.

Clinical facilities: The school has the use of about 122 beds in a hospital which it
built and has leased to the Sisters of Charity ; it has access to several other institu-
tions besides.

A suite of poorly kept rooms is set aside for a dispensary. The attendance is ample.

Date of visit: March, 1909.

(5) WOMAN'S MEDICAL COLLEGE OF BALTIMORE. Organized 1882. An independent
institution.

Entrance requirement: Less than a high school education.
Attendance: 22.

Teaching staff': 31, of whom 18 are professors, 13 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $2000.

Laboratory facilities: Small laboratories, scrupulously well kept, show a desire to
do the best possible with meager resources : pathology, bacteriology, embryology,
chemistry, and anatomy are thus taught.

Clinical facilities: These are quite insufficient: across the street from the school is a
hospital with 17 beds; supplementary material is obtained at several institutions
through staff connections.

A suite of rooms in the college building is devoted to dispensary purposes.
There is a fair attendance.

Date of visit : March, 1909.

(6) MARYLAND MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1898. An independent institution.
Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 95. Almost one-half the school is in the senior class.
Teaching staff: 39, of whom 21 are professors, 18 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $7460 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The school building is wretchedly dirty. Its so-called labora-
tories are of the worst existing type : one neglected and filthy room is set aside
for bacteriology, pathology, and histology: a few dirty test-tubes stand around
in pans and old cigar-boxes. The chemical laboratory is perhaps equal to the
teaching of elementary chemistry. The dissecting-room is foul. This description
completely exhausts its teaching facilities. There is no museum or library and
no teaching accessories of any sort whatsoever.

2 38 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Clinical facilities: The college faculty own and conduct a hospital within a few blocks.
It is essentially a private institution, of no great value to students. Less than 50
beds are free.

The dispensary claims a fair attendance.

Dot* of visit: March, 1909.

(7) ATLANTIC MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1891 as an independent homeopathic
institution. Having "passed through many vicissitudes," it is now non-sectarian.

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 43, of whom 31 are in the senior class, 1 in the freshman class. Of 21
graduates, class of 1908, almost all had failed at other schools or before the regu-
lar state board before entering the Atlantic Medical College, on graduation from
which they could appear before the Homeopathic State Board of Maryland, "re-
puted to be a much easier board to pass."

Teaching staff": 47, of whom 12 are professors, 35 of other grade. Two members of
the teaching staff were graduated in the class of 1908, above mentioned, after
having failed before the regular state board; a third instructor, also a graduate
of 1908, entered this school after failure at the local College of Physicians and
Surgeons.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $3905 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The school occupies a filthy building, in which are to be found
an elementary chemical laboratory, a small room assigned to pathology, bacte-
riology, and histology, equipment being scant and dirty, an ordinary dissecting-
room, a lecture-room with half a skeleton, a small amount of imperfect physiolo-
gical apparatus with a few frogs, and a few cases of books, mostly old and use-
less.

Clinical facilities: These are claimed at a small private hospital several miles off.
They can at best be hardly more than nominal.

The basement of the college building is used for a dispensary.
DaU ofvitit: March, 1909.

General Considerations

THERE are seven medical schools in Maryland, a state whose population increases
slowly and in which there are between two and three times as many physicians as it
now requires. Of these seven schools, two belong to the worst type of American
medical school, viz., the Atlantic Medical College and the Maryland Medical College.
That such unconscionable concerns should at this day continue to flourish is a blot
upon the state of Maryland and the city of Baltimore.

Two more of the seven schools, the Baltimore Medical College and the Woman's

MASSACHUSETTS 239

Medical College, are weak ; two others, the College of Physicians and Surgeons and
the University of Maryland, are large commercial enterprises, whose financial respon-
sibilities are far too extensive for their capital or fee income; the sums annually ap-
plicable to debts in order to simplify their position, or to maintenance in order to
improve their teaching, are reduced by the payment of substantial dividends to
practitioner teachers. Education is thus overshadowed by business. Entrance stand-
ards are low, the full-time teacher is practically unknown, the laboratories are slov-
enly, the atmosphere depressing.

Like Pennsylvania, Maryland has granted lump sums to private corporations en-
gaged in charitable work. The larger ones of the six medical schools mentioned have
thus combined to obtain from the state money enough to build and partly to sup-
port their hospitals. Should the state ever conduct its philanthropic business intel-
ligently, these irresponsible methods would stop; and with them, the medical schools
which they have helped to float. The Johns Hopkins Medical School, for which
neither the state of Maryland nor the' city of Baltimore has ever done anything, is
thus the only medical school in Maryland that either ought to or can live, and to its
development greatly increased means should be freely devoted.

If, meanwhile, a combination of the better independent schools of Baltimore were
effected, much of their property could be disposed of, the equity being used to equip
the resulting institution. A single independent school might thus have a brief and
not discreditable career. In the end, however, the independent schools will pass away,
in Maryland as elsewhere. To their present hospitals the Johns Hopkins would be-
come the heir, thus greatly strengthening its clinical resources. At this date the
Johns Hopkins University is the only academic institution in the state capable of
conducting a modern medical school. It would be safe, interesting, and instructive
to leave medical education in Maryland for a decade or two wholly in its hands. The
state will not meanwhile lack for doctors; it is already overcrowded.

The prerequisite to any reconstruction of the Baltimore situation is the revision
of the state law. The country affords no more conclusive proof of the viciousness of
the two-board system. Not only is neither state board empowered to enforce a pre-
liminary educational requirement, but candidates refused by the "regular" board
subsequently succeed before the homeopathic board. This underground traffic is re-
sponsible for the existence of the Atlantic Medical College, a homeopathic school
that has rendered itself an attractive haven of refuge to rejected "regular'" students
by dropping the significant word from its title.

MASSACHUSETTS

Population, 3,162,347. Number of physicians, 5,577. Ratio, 1 : 567.
Number of medical schools, 5.

240 MEDICAL EDUCATION

BOSTON : Population, 629,868.

(1) MEDICAL SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Organized 1782. An integral depart-
ment of Harvard University.

Entrance requirement : The student has a choice between the bachelor's degree or cer-
tain definite requirements in science and modern languages representing two years
of undergraduate work, provided that in the latter case a higher passing mark is
required for graduation. In the present year, out of a first-year class of 62, 60 en-
tered with the bachelor's degree.

Attendance : The total enrolment is 285 ; about 69 per cent from New England, 53
per cent from Massachusetts.

Teaching staff: 173, of whom 23 are professors ; laboratory instructors as a rule de-
vote their entire time to the department.

Resources available for maintenance: The department has an endowment of $3,326,-
961 ; the fees are merged in the general income of the school. The annual budget
is $251,389, of which $72,037 are derived from tuition fees.

Laboratory facilities : The laboratories are unexcelled in equipment and organiza-
tion, in respect to both teaching and research.

Clinical facilities : Abundant clinical material is available at the Massachusetts Gen-
eral Hospital, the City Hospital, and elsewhere. But serious restrictions are felt
in two directions : (1) While the university is free to secure laboratory men wher-
ever it chooses, it is practically bound to make clinical appointments by seniority,
in accordance with the custom prevailing in the hospital which it uses, or to leave
its professor without a hospital clinic. In general it follows that the heir to the
hospital service is heir to the university chair. In consequence there is a noticeable
lack of sympathy between the laboratory and the clinical men. They do not repre-
sent the same ideals. There is no question but that an institution of this rank ought
to work in the most intimate cooperation with a hospital ; and that, if such were
the case, the same principles would obtain in selecting clinical teachers as prevail
elsewhere in the university. (2) The extent to which hospital material can be util-
ized is also limited, though less in surgery than in medicine. The teaching is in
the main of the demonstrative character. Something more intimate is possible in
a limited way with fourth-year students. The hospital services with one exception
rotate at the end of periods of four months.

The school is now installing its own dispensary, likely to be of great value in
its clinical instruction.

DaU of vifit : October, 1909.

(2) TOFTS COLLEGE MEDICAL SCHOOL. Organized 1893. Administratively an integral
department of Tufts College, though actual scientific intercourse is not intimate.

MASSACHUSETTS 241

Entrance requirement: Below an actual four-year high school course, since certificates
of uncertain value have been accepted and examinations used cover less than half
a high school course. This is the less defensible as 97 percent of the total enrol-
ment come from New England.

Attendance: The attendance is 384; 97 per cent from New England, 80 per cent from
Massachusetts.

Teaching staff: 103, of whom 33 are professors. There are five full-time professors
and five full-time assistants in pathology, histology, physiology, and chemistry.

Resources available for maintenance: The school relies on its fees, amounting to
$59,093, repaying out of them large advances for buildings made out of the general
income of the college.

Laboratory facilities: The laboratories are entirely adequate to the teaching work of
the school.

Clinical facilities: For medical clinics the school is confined to the Boston City Hos-
pital and the Boston Dispensary, which furnish abundant material under the usual
more or less imperfect control. The Carney Hospital provides considerable addi-
tional work in surgery; the specialties are cared for in other institutions. The
school is thus clinically handicapped in exactly the same way as Harvard, but
to a greater degree by reason of its being restricted in its medical clinics to a
single municipal hospital and dispensary. Its range of choice in the matter of
clinical professors is limited by the same considerations.

Date of visit: October, 1909.

(3) BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. Homeopathic. Organized 1873. The
University connection is nominal.

Entrance requirement: A certificate of graduation from an approved four-year high
school, or examination ; the examination is not set by the university, but by the
medical school, and is markedly below the four-year high school standard.

Attendance: Total enrolment, 90; 83 per cent from New England, about 60 per cent
from Massachusetts.

Teaching staff: 64, 29 being professors.

Resources available for maintenance: The institution is mainly dependent on fees
($12,762, estimated), but these have been consistently used to develop its facilities.

Laboratory facilities : In striking contrast with schools in which, whatever the claim,
fees have not been so used, this school has an excellent building, admirably kept
and well equipped, and attractive laboratories for pathology, bacteriology, physi-
ology, chemistry, and anatomy. There is no experimental pharmacology. It pos-
sesses a library in charge of a permanent librarian, a beautifully mounted collection

MEDICAL EDUCATION

of pathological material, an excellent refrigerator plant, and other features in-
dicative of intelligent and conscientious effort.

Clinked facilities: The school adjoins a hospital of some 230 beds, of which 125 are
available for amphitheater and ward clinics. The material is fairly abundant and
varied; but students do not make laboratory examinations for the patients whom
they see in the wards. A pavilion for contagious diseases is also accessible. Con-
nected with the hospital is a large, thoroughly modern, and systematically con-
ducted dispensary, in which laboratory work and physical examination are more
closely connected.

Dat« ofvltU: October, 1909.

(4) COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. Organized 1882. An independent insti-
tution.

Entrance requirement : Vague.

Attendance: 172, called in the catalogue "matriculates and applicants."

Teaching staff: 30 professors and 15 lecturers.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees, amounting to $10,000 (estimated). A re-
duction of 20 per cent is made to students who pay in advance for the entire four
years.

Laboratory facilities : These facilities are wretched : ill-lighted, dirty, and poorly
equipped so-called laboratories are provided for anatomy, pathology, etc.

Clinkal facilities : The clinical resources are dubious. The catalogue attempts to con-
vey the idea (p. 21) that the school has the same opportunities as Harvard and
Tufts ; as a matter of fact, no member of the faculty of the College of Physicians
and Surgeons has a staff appointment in the City Hospital, and teaching there is
utterly impossible otherwise. The same is true of the wards of the Massachusetts
General Hospital. At both institutions anyone, whether a student or not, may
attend the public amphitheater clinics once weekly. But as these are freely open
to the public and are of little or no value, they are hardly to be counted as teaching
facilities. A limited attendance is required at a miserable dispensary, more than
an hour's journey from the college building.

Dot* ofvint: October, 1909.

CAMBRIDGE : Population, 102,982.

(5) MASSACHUSETTS COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHY. Established 1897. An independent in-
stitution.

Entrance requirement : Vague.
Attendance: 90.

MICHIGAN 243

Teaching staff: 34, of whom 19 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to 811,400 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The school occupies a neatly kept building, in which are pro-
vided one poorly equipped laboratory in common for pathology and bacteriology,
and another, similar in character, for chemistry and urinalysis, and an anatomical
room. It possesses neither museum nor library. Instruction at the school building
is limited to lectures, recitations, and " laboratory " work.

Clinical facilities : No " treatment" is administered in the school building. For that
the students resort in their last year to the Chelsea Hospital, a pay institution
of 10 to 15 beds, more than one hour's journey from the college building. Patho-
logy is taught in the same year.

Date of visit : October, 1909.

{For general discussion see " New England" p. 261.}

MICHIGAN

Population, 2,666,308. Number of physicians, 4109. Ratio, 1 : 649.
Number of medical colleges, 5.

ANN ARBOR: Population, 14,734.

(1) UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY. Organized in
1850. An integral part of the university.

Entrance requirement: Two years of college work, including sciences strictly enforced.
Attendance: 389, 45 per cent from Michigan.

Teaching staff: 63, of whom 22 are professors. The laboratory work is wholly in
charge of full-time instructors ; but assisi^ints in adequate number are lacking. The
clinical teachers are salaried and owe their first duty to the school.

Resources available for maintenance: The school and the university hospital are sup-
ported mainly by state appropriation. The budget of the school is $83,000, that of
the hospital, $70,000. Endowments to the extent of $175,000 carry a part of this
charge. The income in fees is $34,093.*

Laboratory facilities: Excellently equipped laboratories are provided for all the fun-
damental branches; the men in charge are productive scientists as well as com-
petent teachers. There is a large library, a good museum, and other necessary
teaching aids.

Clinical facilities: The school is fortunate in the possession of its own hospital, every
1 Including laboratory fees paid by students registered in the homeopathic department; see (2).

244 MEDICAL EDUCATION

case in which can be used for purposes of instruction. A liberal policy has largely
overcome the disadvantages of location in a small town ; for the clinical material is in
the departments of surgery, psychiatry, and various specialties, of sufficient amount;
it is fair in medicine, increasing in obstetrics. The thoroughness and continuity
with which the cases can be used to train the student in the technique of modem
methods go far to offset defects due to limitations in their number and variety.

Date of visit: March, 1909.

(2) UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HOMEOPATHIC COLLEGE. Organized 1875. An organic
department of the university.

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school education.
Attendance: 80, 38 per cent from Michigan.
Teaching staff: 26, of whom 15 are professors.

Resources available for maintenance: The school and its hospital are supported by
state appropriations. Its budget is $16,400; that of its hospital, $31,000. The in-
come in fees is $4515.

Laboratory facilities : The students receive their laboratory instruction in common
with the students of the Department of Medicine and Surgery, despite the fact
that there is a difference of two years of college work in their preparation.

Clinical facilities : The college has its own hospital of about 100 beds, where clinical
instruction is given according to homeopathic principles.

Date of visit: March, 1909.

BATTLE CREEK: Population, 25,862.

(3) AMERICAN MEDICAL MISSIONARY COLLEGE. Organized 1895. An independent in-
stitution. A divided school, part of the work being given in Chicago, part at
Battle Creek. No year is given entire at either place.

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school course or its equivalent. Christians only
are admitted. The Chicago teachers are all practitioners ; the Battle Creek teachers
are connected with the Battle Creek Sanitarium as laboratory workers or physicians.

Attendance: 75.

Teaching- staff: 31, of whom 22 are professors, 9 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance : Income from endowment of $200,000 and fees.

Laboratory facilities : Anatomy is given in Chicago, where the student spends six
weeks during each of the first three years and 30 weeks of the fourth year. The
other laboratory courses are given at Battle Creek by the laboratory men and
physicians connected with the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Indeed, the school and the

MICHIGAN 245

sanitarium are inextricably interwoven. Students assist in the laboratories and
treatment-rooms. Their laboratory training thus takes on a decidedly practical
character. But this has its disadvantages; for the sanitarium is devoted to the ap-
plication of certain ideas rather than to untrammeled scientific investigation.
Disciples rather than scientists are thus trained. The outfit is adequate for routine
work, with abundant practical illustration in chemistry, pathology, bacteriology,
and histology. In physiology and pharmacology the provision is slighter.

Clinked facilities: Of the last year, 30 weeks are spent in Chicago, where the students
attend St. Luke's Hospital, one or two other institutions, and a dispensary in the
school building. For additional clinical teaching they depend on Battle Creek : in
the sanitarium they see an abundance of chronic and surgical cases; acute cases
are rare, and are accessible chiefly when physicians can ask students to accompany
them on their rounds. The clinical laboratory is closely correlated with bedside
work. By assisting in the sanitarium and out, the student gets an unusually close
experience as far as it goes, but, once more, under the limitations of the therapeutic
theories approved by the sanitarium authorities; a critical and investigative spirit
is not cultivated.

The instructors of the divided parts of the school form practically separate faculties.
Date of visit: February, 1910.

DETROIT: Population, 393,536.

(4) DETROIT COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. Organized by merger 1885. An independent
institution.

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school diploma or its equivalent, actually
enforced.

Attendance: 161, 70 per cent from Michigan (16 per cent from Canada).

Teaching staff: 104, of whom 25 are professors and 79 of other grade. There are
no full-time teachers.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees only, amounting to $22,000 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : The school is provided with separate laboratories, each with
ordinary routine equipment, for the following subjects : chemistry, anatomy, phys-
iology, pathology, clinical microscopy, histology, and bacteriology. There is a slight
additional equipment in the way of museum, charts, books, and other teaching ad-
juncts.

Clinical facilities : The school has access on the usual terms to several hospitals, staff
members of which hold positions on the school faculty. The hospital service ro-
tates every three months. At one hospital 100 available beds are perhaps equally

246 MEDICAL EDUCATION

divided between medicine and surgery; elsewhere surgery greatly predominates.
Obstetrical work is mainly furnished by the Woman's Hospital and by an out-
patient department just started. Post-mortems are hard to get.

The dispensary service is fair.
Date of visit .-December, 1909.

(5) DETROIT HOMEOPATHIC COLLEGE. Organized 1899. An independent school.
Entrance requirement: A four-year high school course or its equivalent.
Attendance: 34.

Teaching- staff': 35, of whom 17 are professors, 18 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $3010 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : These are wretched. There is an ordinary laboratory for chem-
istry; another, much less than ordinary, for bacteriology. The pathological room
contained a few dozen specimens in utter disorder; the anatomical room contained
a single cadaver. The teaching-rooms are bare, except for chairs and tables; the
building is poorly kept. The dean and the secretary have their offices "downtown."

Clinical facilities : The school has access to Grace Hospital, the wards of which con-
tain 56 beds, mostly surgical. Clinics are held two days weekly. The hospital
authorities are well disposed towards the school, but the "boys don't take ad-
vantage of their opportunities."

There is a dispensary at the school building. It is incredibly bad. Prescriptions
are found written on scraps of paper, unnumbered. There are no systematic records.
Date of visit : December, 1909.

General Considerations

MICHIGAN is fortunate in the possession of an alert state board, which enforces with
vigor the high school requirement, and may perhaps be counted on to advocate an
advance of the state practice standard to meet the educational standard of the state
university. As the state furnishes a thoroughly admirable education at relatively
slight expense, there is no reason why it should keep the practice of medicine open
to low-grade physicians, whether trained within or without its borders. Sound policy
would quickly close the two homeopathic schools and, in all probability, the Detroit
College of Medicine. To the credit of the latter institution, however, be it said that
its officers have heartily cooperated with the state board in the enforcement of a
genuine high school standard.

The real problem now agitating the state concerns the medical department of the
state university at Ann Arbor. The defects of Ann Arbor as the seat of a medical
school have been touched on in these pages. There is no question that, if the entire
state university were at Detroit, the medical department would be better off. But

MINNESOTA 247

this is by no means equivalent to urging that it be detached or split. The entire
detached school is now on trial at Galveston, Indianapolis, New York. It would be
well to watch the outcome of those experiments before trying any others. It is already
clear that if a university department of medicine is to be genuinely productive, the
remote department requires most generous support ; for much that is provided at
the seat of the university for other departments will have to be duplicated. To cre-
ate the university spirit in a distant institution is almost like developing a second
— though much less expensive — university.

An alternative suggestion looks to the removal to Detroit of part or all of the
clinical instruction. If part is removed, clinical teachers must oscillate backward and
forward between Detroit and Ann Arbor. Where would the productive clinical teacher
have his workshop ? Nowhere, in all likelihood. If the entire clinical department is
removed, the split school faces the conditions we encounter in Nebraska, California,
and Kansas. Once more, let us wait for the successful operation of one of these divided
schools before multiplying unpromising experiments. Meanwhile, the state can by
increased liberality almost at will develop the medical clinic of the university hos-
pital. Agitation in favor of splitting or removing it may proceed from several con-
siderations,— it is not inspired by sound scientific or educational ideas.

For, Ann Arbor has itself proved what the experience of Germany had previously
demonstrated, — that a school of medicine can be developed in a small university
town. The ideals are there; the contiguous departments are there; there is an ab-
sence of the distractions which have thus far proved so damaging to city clinicians.
A faculty of distinction, with a hospital well equipped for the care of the sick,
and for teaching and research, can successfully overcome the most serious diffi-
culties of the situation. The problem can be solved by intelligent organization and
liberal support. Gaps may indeed remain in the student's experience. But if he has
been well drilled in technique and method, his defects will be readily cured by a hos-
pital year. The solution for Michigan may therefore come, as has been proposed,
through an effective affiliation of the hospitals of the state with the school of medicine
of the state university. The hospitals would profit bya connection of this kind, and they
would assist by becoming factors in the education of the future physicians of the state.

MINNESOTA

Population, 2,162,726. Number of physicians, 2204. Ratio, 1 : 981.
Number of medical schools, 1.

MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL : Population, 552,211.

(1) UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY. Organized in 1883,
it has step by step absorbed all other medical schools in the state, including (1909)
the homeopathic department of the university. Elective courses in homeopathic

248 MEDICAL EDUCATION

materia medica and therapeutics are offered on condition that students follow-
ing them shall receive the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Homeopathy.

Entrance requirement: Two years of college work, specifically including the funda-
mental sciences and a modern language.

Attendance : 174 , 83 per cent from Minnesota.

Teaching staff: 49 professors and 71 of other grade, — total, 120.

Resources available for maintenance: State appropriations. The budget calls for
$71,336. The income from fees is $16,546.

Laboratory facilities : Excellent, exceedingly attractive, and well organized labora-
tories are provided for all the scientific branches. The State Laboratory of Pub-
lic Health is practically part of the school plant. The instruction is in charge of
full-time teachers, generously supplied with books, apparatus, and material.

Clinical facilities : The school has hitherto relied on the municipal hospitals and un-
paid clinical teachers, with the usual results. Teaching opportunities were both lim-
ited in extent and precarious in character. These institutions are in fact not organ-
ized, equipped, or conducted with educational requirements in mind. An appropria-
tion has now been made to build a teaching hospital ; and a small temporary hos-
pital has been started. Simultaneously, the clinical teaching has been reorganized
by placing the chiefs in medicine and surgery respectively on salaries that com-
mand the interest and effort of active teachers. The same policy must be applied
generally throughout the clinical department.

The dispensary, well attended and long loosely conducted, has recently been re-
constructed along the same lines.

Date ofvifit : May, 1909.

General Considerations

MINNESOTA is perhaps the first state in the Union that may fairly be considered to
have solved the most perplexing problems connected with medical education and prac-
tice except as to osteopathy. It has indeed still to realize its plans for an adequate
clinical establishment of modern character; but there is little doubt that this is only
a question of time, — and of a short time, at that. Meanwhile medical education has,
with the active cooperation of the state board, been concentrated in the hands of the
university, fortunately situated in the heart of the largest community of the state ;
the state has got rid of rival schools, regular and sectarian, the latter by a perfectly
fair provision for separate instruction in sectarian dogmas for any student who is will-
ing to accept a diploma qualified so as to mark that fact. Since all else — anatomy,
physiology, surgery — are common to and the same for all " schools " of medicine, there
is one standard of admission to the department, one quality of instruction, one exami-
nation for the degree for all alike. Finally, the educational preliminary qualification of

MISSISSIPPI 249

the state medical school has become the practice preliminary of the state. In future,
any person desiring to practise medicine in Minnesota must get as good an education
— preliminary and professional — as the state furnishes and requires of its own sons :
a regulation both fair and wise, whether viewed from the standpoint of the student
or from the broader standpoint of public interest, to which all else is properly
subordinate. Henceforth, the success of the school will depend largely on the gener-
osity of the state in developing the clinical teaching, and on the character of the
hospital and dispensary which it organizes with that in view.

MISSISSIPPI

Population, 1,786,773. Number of physicians, 2054. Ratio, 1 : 887.
Number of medical schools, 2.

MERIDIAN : Population, 22,415.

(1) MISSISSIPPI MEDICAL COLLEGE. Organized 1906. A stock company.
Entrance requirement : Nominal.

Attendance: 100, 94 per cent from Mississippi.

Teaching staff: 19, of whom 12 are professors, 7 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance : Fees, amounting to 87500 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities : At the date of visit, there was no outfit at all. Subsequent
reliable report credits the school with a vat containing four cadavers in a room
without other contents, a simple outfit for elementary chemistry, and twenty brand-
new microscopes, but no material to use with them.

Clinical facilities : Practically none. Some of the faculty have places on the staff of a
small hospital over a mile distant.

There is no dispensary.
Date of visit : January, 1909.

OXFORD-VICKSBURG: (Population: Oxford, 2104; Vicksburg, 16,800).

(2) UNIVEBSITY OF MISSISSIPPI, MEDICAL DEPARTMENT.1 A divided school. First half
organized 1903; second half organized 1909. An organic part of the university.

Entrance requirement: A four-year high school education or its equivalent. Over
one-half of this year's entering class had had two or more years of college work.

Attendance : 39.

1 As this report goes to press, it is announced that the clinical end of this school (at Vicksburg) is
discontinued. The first two years will continue to be given at Oxford.

250 MEDICAL EDUCATION

Teaching staff: At Oxford, 8 professors, 3 of whom give entire time to this depart-
ment, and 3 assistants ; at Vicksburg, 6 professors and 10 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance : The department shares the general funds of the
university. Its budget calls for $15,000. Fees amount to $3500.

Laboratory facilities : (Oxford.) Laboratories, adequate to the needs of the instruc-
tion offered, are provided for physiology, pharmacology, histology, and anatomy ;
pathology and bacteriology are less satisfactory. Chemistry is well cared for in
the university laboratory. The teachers need a larger number of competent as-
sistants and helpers; a beginning has been made towards a departmental library.

C